Another One for the Road
As I sit in a speeding car, going so fast it seems almost unreal, bathed in foggy yellow light, I wonder if I live for the right things. If I am going in the right direction. And if I’ll only find out when it’s too late, and the golden years are gone and left behind.
Nowadays I can’t feel really happy anymore. I cry more easily at movies and film and theatre. I don’t find things all that funny. And occasionally when I scrunch up my face and laugh, I’m not even laughing inside.
I’m cynical, and skeptical, and I think all people are jerks. I think no one understands or cares to. I pounce on the smallest sliver of pessimism I pick up on and let it fester inside me.
I’m driven, I’m motivated, I’m going on and on, like a clockwork. But somehow I seem to have lost the reason or ability to feel, as I traverse this straight, straight road.
A Bit of Golden Lining
Today’s a slightly happier day, so I thought I should remember today.
What better way than to write it down, with heavy eyelids, wet hair, while clad in star-print pyjamas with my feet in fuzzy slippers?
The bed beckons. I should turn in. But I want to hold on to today a bit longer, because tomorrow’s a new day of new worries and new panic moments flooding in while I try to finally start on my essay and preparations for Monday.
It reminds me of the good old Sunday nights oh-so-long ago, where I’d sit and get ready my pencilcase, put my exercise books into my gaudy SWAN backpack, and sneakily hide all the homework I didn’t do (only to be discovered when I got into trouble at school and warranting a call from my teacher to my father – was that the reason now? I don’t remember really) while father sat at the foot of the staircase and clipped away at his nails and mother sang away upstairs as she ironed my little dark blue pinafore.
Sometimes I miss those days.
Sometimes I don’t look back.
I Want to Tell You
I sit here in my usual seat facing the window, and I will wallow for a bit in my misery and disappointment.
It’s been a picturesque day – snowfall for almost 12 hours, relentless, intermittent and temperamental, undecided like the way I shake salt into my cooking.
Outside I see blankets and blankets of snow – on rooftops, on frostbitten cars, on untouched roads – each mark made by human error layered with another and another layer of snow until the imperfection disappears.
I wish I had gone out there, in the biting cold, to look at the sky and feel snowflakes gracefully sinking into my face.
But worldly priorities beckon, and I can only watch from my window.
It’s a new year. Shouldn’t things be something different? Shouldn’t I have an epiphany, an urge to write down my resolutions on paper, a startling revelation about myself?
I wish I could find the answers. But I don’t even know the questions.
Speeding Cars
- Imogen Heap
here’s the day you hoped would never come
don’t feed me violins
just run with me through rows of speeding cars
the papercuts, the cheating lovers
the coffee’s never strong enough
i know you think it’s more than just bad luck
there there, baby
it’s just text book stuff
it’s in the ABC of growing up
now now, darling
don’t lose your head
none of us were angels
and you know I love you, yeah
sleeping pills know, sleeping dogs lie
never far enough away
glistening in the cold sweat of guilt
I’ve watched you slowly winding down for years
you can’t keep on like this
now’s a bad a time as any
there there, baby
it’s just text book stuff
it’s in the ABC of growing up
now now, darling
don’t kill yourself
none of us were angels
and you know I love you, yeah
it’s ok by me
it was a long time ago
___
Here’s a song to usher in the new year. It’s been a long time since I wrote anything down like this, but I feel compelled to now – it is the first of January, after all.
It was nice meeting 2010 face on in Paris with a good friend I haven’t seen in a long time, but even that, the Eiffel Tower in all its glory, the two scoops of precious Berthillion ice cream, the croissants and macaroons, the rocky seasides and choppy waters of Malta, the golden, arrogant arch of the Azure Window at sunset, the entire bus saying and waving bye-bye to us when we stepped off our enchanting little yellow bus in Paola…still cannot make up for time I feel I have lost and wasted this term.
I feel estranged from my emotions, from things I have loved and love still, from people I promised to keep in touch with, from all my personal, long-entrenched priorities. And all these beautiful moments, these defining sights and sounds, still seem unable to reach out to this detached part of me. So I may have found it back somewhat over the last week or so. Yet as 2010 looms, it seems to be slowly, surely, creeping its way into the dark again.
Someone I talked to today said he is looking for himself. The true him. Isn’t that cheesy? But isn’t that so real to most people?
Falling Isn’t Funny
It never occurred to me, until just a moment ago, as I lay swamped under a pile of clothes on my bed, half awake and dreaming, that falling is always heavily romanticised in movies.
In movies, when people fall from great heights, the process is always slow, always surreal, always serene, always beautiful somehow. The falling person’s body is captured in a graceful still, the person’s eyes are closed, the person is smiling as his or her slender arms sweep through the air, hair rushing in a beautiful streak of colour above, waterfall thundering behind in silence.
Then I thought of rollercoasters and how afraid I am of them.
Where is all that beauty? Does my heartbeat slow? Does my hair rush behind me? Do I feel tranquil?
No. My cheeks contort, my heart races to the point it feels as if it might fall out without my noticing, my stomach churns, it’s too fast for me to notice my hair, I feel like I’m in the express train to death.
Death! So I am afraid of it after all? I say all the time that I’m not afraid of dying. I don’t think anyone is. We’re all just afraid of how it’s going to happen. We’re afraid of the pain.
There is no such thing as a beautiful escape, is there? It’s either you swallow things as they come along – failures, people, heartaches, indifference – or be swallowed.
