Pretty Things

Pretty words litter ugly truths

while true words are hidden in

cavernous lockets that reside in

imaginations and secrets.

Floating or walking smoothly,

bubbles flutter in and out of existence

catching the sunlight without

delightful displays of naming

and pop without a sound.

Only the most fragile success

in impossible things (because

they need to; to experience something magical)

The delicacy of the almost broken 

shatter once pulled over

by the rocking motion of the sea.

It isn't to prove the extraordinary

but to live what little vivacity

that's left to them.

It is all they can do,

the shattered,

to understand what's true

and what isn't.

Perfection is Boring

Perfect Stories

Perfection is boring.

What ridiculous person would think it was what they wanted?

It isn’t anything but the thought.

Perfection is one of those words that don’t really make sense because it can be defined in so many different ways to so many different people. It’s an ambiguous word. Nothing is also another ambiguous word. So is normal.

What makes it ambiguous? The thoughts of philosophers is what. They say that the world could be completely in our head and not one bit real. If that is the case, why don’t I succeed all the time? Why am I afraid of things? Why do I seem to be defined by other people? Why do I care so much about other people’s opinions? It seems pointless. Philosophers, they have interesting ideas but that’s all they are. Ideas. What does it matter if it’s all in our own head? It affects me more than I want it to. Does that reflect on how much our brains affect us? I’m sure psychologists could find many different reasons as to why I am afraid of things even if it’s all inside my head. Or why I am so affected by my own mind’s creations. Is it possible that I could right now, be in my head and the real world is monitoring my subconscious brain wondering what was going on. It would be ultra confusing. But what’s real (there’s another ambiguous word) is that I’m here and this is what I’m making of it right now. It doesn’t matter what happened or what’s going to happen because they all were or going to be right now at one stage and that was the decision. You could examine why you’d done those things then at that time in that mindset but in reality it doesn’t matter. Maybe it might make you feel better but really the only thing that’s happening now is you.

I have a story, but it’s not the one I’m going to tell you about, I have another more interesting idea that’s going to take place here and it’s going to be exciting, new, interesting, maybe even funny. You may end up with a moral; you may not understand it at all. What you make of it is really none of my business. What I aim to do is to keep you interested by devices such as characterisation and magic. I like to use pictures as narration and quotes that feel meaningful, but are really empty.

***

Life was an interesting notion to Emma. Her celebration of it every year was joyous and all that but it didn’t change anything really except the number which indicated her age. She was only one day older than yesterday but somehow it was more significant than the rest of the days. It gave her a definitive point of reference when it came to the laws of drinking, and having sex.

She was in the library most of the day enjoying the latest book in her collections. It contained action, adventure romance, all the typical things she loved in a book. It transported her to a new world that always finished with happy endings and it didn’t matter what happened afterwards because they were happy just then and there in that moment. That’s what Emma wanted. She wanted something in a book to become real. There was a book where that happened. She had read it recently.

A knock on the door caused her to look up disappointed. Her mother poked her head around and the rest of her body followed. Emma silently remembered the page she was on and closed the book with a firm gentleness.

“Emma darling, we were hoping you would come out and enjoy your birthday cake and open presents with us.”

“Okay mum, just a moment.”

Her mother disappeared as quickly as she appeared and Emma sighed. She checked she still knew which page she was on and carried the book with her how a little kid would a favourite toy: hugged close to her chest, safe in her arms.

She was old enough now not to have the excited feeling you get when you open presents. She would miss that but that’s how life goes.

She walked slowly scuffing her feet with her fluffy monster slippers. The big furry craziness of them comforted her as she walked to a bright white kitchen with smiling adult faces and the big round birthday cake. The cake was royal purple and there was edible gold outlining the edges of the cake and shouting to her “happy birthday!” in capital letters. It was extravagant and expensive and it was beautiful. She secretly loved it and that excited feeling crept into her for a moment that didn’t last very long. Ruptures of out of tune singing (happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Emma! Happy birthday to you) forced a smile out of her, which she couldn’t stop. The out of tune slightly slurred voices were worse than an out of tune piano and she was quite relieved when the sound stopped even though it had made her involuntarily smile. She blew out the candles. Two of the flames remained and her parents kissed her on both cheeks at the same time. She rolled her eyes and everyone laughed. She blew again pretending she was the big bad wolf in the three little pigs story. The flickering yellow flame blew away in her breath and everyone clapped enthusiastically while the loud chattering of adults started up again. Her mother handed her a big silver knife that dully gleamed and she and her mother’s hands guided the sharp end into the royal purple icing and through the fluffy yellow insides. It touched the bottom and they slid it out. Emma tried to help with the next slice but her mother told her it might be easier if she did the rest.

A piece of cake sat in her lap and a spoon in her hand and she examined the lines that the cake contained. She thought it was like cutting a tree to count the rings that told its age. This cake had only three obvious lines and a few more once examined closely. Emma squinted making the cake blurry finding more lines. There was a line on the outside of the cake where it was holding the fluffy inside of the cake together (like skin, Emma thought), which appeared four times in the two layers. There was the icing, which had two layers, the purple and the gold which didn’t appear evenly throughout. Then there was the cream and jam in between the two layers of cake. That gave a total of ten lines. She frowned, she had hoped her analogy with the tree would be correct but it was only pretending to be like a tree. It was just something pretty to eat on a day where she coincidentally turned twelve. She sunk her spoon into the thinner end of the cake and let it sit in her mouth for a few seconds before she chewed and swallowed. It tasted delicious and perfect. It was the opposite of how she felt, how she always felt.

Back in the library she sipped a glass of lemonade and read her book. She had advanced twelve pages, and already the main character was venturing into the depths of mystery discovering things that Emma would never have discovered in real life. She knew what was in the main character’s head, where they were and why they were there. It was exciting to know the character’s own feelings and feeling them herself even though she couldn’t possibly feel anyone else’s emotions besides her own.

The developing relationship between prisoner and captor was building and Emma was turning the pages more eagerly. Her mouth couldn’t help smiling when captor and prisoner finally understood they were on the same side after a physical fight where one ended up on top of the other. Love followed and Emma’s smile widened.

It disappeared as soon as the library door was opened again. Her mother stood there making her presence known.

“What are you doing you silly girl? Come out and thank the guests for coming right now.”

“Yes mum.”

Emma’s eyes looked down sullenly and she memorised the page she was on. She closed the book, and left it on the chair and walked slowly out the door with her mother behind her. She decided that it might go faster if she quickened her pace and fast-walked to the door and fake-smiled with her mind still thinking about the adventures of her book and wondered what was going to happen next. All the while, she thanked the adults and smiled and accepted awkward hugs from a few of them. She reached out to shake hands with some person and instead bumped them causing them to drop their clutch. Emma jumped in surprise. Everyone stared at her amused, a few chuckling at her reaction. She quickly looked at her mother whose fake smile was still shiny and perfect. She picked up the bag and handed it back to the person and waved goodbye.

Once they were gone, she turned and faced her mother whose smile slowly faded.

“Mum, do you need any help cleaning up?”

“No darling, it’s alright.”

Emma left and her mother yawned. Her mother climbed the stairs to her bedroom to fall into her own fantastical dreams where the misinterpretation of a situation eventuated in the interesting events that led up to her meeting the man that she would fall uncontrollably in love with, Emma’s dad. 

The Ordinary Kind of Weird

I found a snake wriggling for its life. It wriggled this way and that and I found it fascinating. Then mum hit it with a shovel and there were two pieces of long wriggly bodies. Apparently it was poisonous and I was very close to it. I shook my head and sighed because she always did this. Always changed everything according to her own fears... NOT anyone else’s.

There was also that time where I was happily staring at a red frog that I was attempting to touch but it kept hopping away over here and there. She surprised me by suffocating it with a plastic bag right in front of my eyes, because it could’ve killed me. I used to think this was melodramatic.

I have come to realise the weirdness of mum’s worry was actually due to my proneness to fall into slightly increased accidental dangers. My life seems to be in more danger than I ever realised. Especially with my dangerous record. Only today there was a crocodile in someone’s backyard and I was about to sit on it when someone shouted and I turned away to see that someone was being mugged.

It really was quite interesting. I almost sat down on the crocodile thinking it was a log. It opened its big teeth filled log-like mouth and looked like it was yawning at me. I told it not to harm anyone else and then I left it trusting it to listen to me. Later I found out someone else had sat on it and it grabbed that person’s leg and yanked it right off. Poor guy.

I don’t really understand why these things happen, but I guess no one does. Life is just one big blur of life then death and no one knows after that I suppose. Not really anyway. God believers think one thing while the rest of us accept the inevitability of a nonexistence. It may be morbid but we are pessimists.

I am surprisingly optimistic for a pessimist. Cats like to meow at me sometimes and I at them. Sometimes we have conversations until the cat gets tired of me and walks away. Those are the peaceful times. Today I am making a milkshake with apples and ice cream and milk. I realise it isn’t a normal combination but neither is strawberries and cream and that is basically the same thing.

I sometimes feel like no one will remember me at the end and I will die with no one to hear the last words I ever mutter. So I have written it down and will keep it with me at all times just in case. I hope someone will find my last words and be affected by them. I’m not wise enough to write good words so I just use my own experiences of life and summarise them in one sentence. Every year it changes except for the three years in a row where it stayed the same. That was when my view was so narrow minded that I was too stubborn to know that I was wrong.

So, stories usually have dynamics but I have decided to tell you something not in chronological order because that is how our memories work. They are never in chronological order and are in fact brought about by other instances that remind us of something else. I sometimes wonder that if I can’t remember my childhood very well, how will I remember my teenage years. Remembering 20 years of life seems like a lot of information. Remembering 40years of life sounds hard so I take pictures and write down things more often than not. It captures the moment of how I feel about whatever at that moment and at least it will not disappear like memories. Unfortunately the brain isn’t full proof. I lost my memory once. But I only forgot about 3 days because I was unconscious for most of it. It all seemed a dream. I thought I would die then with the words Living is to die for in my pocket. That was the last year I had those words. Those words had stayed with me for 3 years in the ups and downs and the rain and the sunshine. It stayed constant in my ever-changing life.

Change is a bad thing when you’re a kid. My parents told me they were getting divorced when I was 8 years old and I didn’t understand the point when they were still together. Then one of them left but they always came back. It was as if they were still together because I saw them both equally as much as if I saw them before they were ‘divorced’. The logic of parents was ridiculous to me at that time but I went along with it and I wasn’t troubled or bad. I got A’s and B’s but I found out later they were marking me a lot easier because I was going through my parent’s divorce. They were actually meant to be B’s and C’s. It was the first time I had gotten an A so when I found out it wasn’t really because my work was outstanding I finally cried like everyone had expected I would. There were hugs and humour to try to get me to stop but they didn’t really understand why I was upset so I just went along with it and attempted a smile.

Smiling was hard for a time. I was in my 20’s and I had just realised that I need to start my own life. It was a time for first jobs and no one ever wanted to hire me. So I stayed solemn and faked smiles to employers for the one off interviews. I finally got a job at a fast food restaurant and dreaded the days I had to go to work. But I needed money so I kept applying for jobs and worked there as well. It wasn’t until I was 22 that I finally got a boring office job that required no experience. It was thrilling at first, but then I found out what I had to do and how much I would get paid. It was a little better though because there were fewer customers whose tempers were volatile. I had a lot of time to philosophise while I inputted data that numbed my brain. This is when I started writing my last words and putting them in my pocket. I had a lot of scrunched up paper in my wastepaper basket. Finally I found the right words. It was a miracle at the time but when I was that age, exaggeration was my thing.

Idiosyncrasies were unfortunately too frequent and annoyed even myself. If I heard myself say the same thing automatically a few times I would involuntarily shout in my mind. Sometimes the shouts were squeaks and then would turn into a cacophony of animals but most of the time it was angry and a little scary. I scared myself sometimes.

My sister would always scare me around corners and hiding in the dark. She was the master of making me jump spontaneously. She thought it was hilarious every time I did. She gave me the only thrills I ever got in life. Jumping off aeroplanes for fun and bungee jumping off bridges were all very well but I would never try it myself. I was too afraid of dying and that I would lose my last words and then I would affect no one.

I have travelled overseas but always to safe places. So India was definitely off the table. The army was something of a myth to me. Exercise and fighting were hardly ever involved in my life. I was very safe and checked both ways twice before I crossed the road. It was simple and easy and I was content with it.

I did always find birds trying to make their way into my house and I am still not sure why but I have nursed numerous pigeons, lorikeets, and minor birds from injuries they sustained crashing into my glass door. It was scary at first not knowing what to do with them and hoping you weren’t injuring them while you were trying to help them but in the end I just did it and they survived and never came back.

My girlfriend never came back. She was my first and my only girlfriend. She had the cutest smile and somehow always found me funny. We were together for 5 months. She wasn’t a looker but she wasn’t ugly. She was normal and liked me and that was a rare occasion so I took the chance and I fell in love. She did not and she left without a note. I knew she was unhappy for a few days but I never really thought she’d leave without saying goodbye.

That was a hard time in my life and it reminded me of when I couldn’t breathe under the sea and I don’t think I’m supposed to remember it but it was peaceful. It was a perfect combination of yin and yang. I felt desperate and peaceful and it was the first time I understood some poems I had read as a teenager.

A beautiful woman who looked like an angel rescued me. I asked her if she was an angel and she laughed and shook her head. I turned my head and coughed more water out and she was gone. I often fantasized about her in my daydreams but was always interrupted when things got good.

At the moment I blink a lot and sometimes mutter to myself unintentionally making people look sideways at me. I always feel weird when this happens and I go silent immediately. I decided to get a bird and surround myself with walls instead so my pet wouldn’t look sideways at me. Petrie my bird didn’t understand humans enough to know that what I was doing was weird. It was comforting being surrounded by no judgemental minds.

I recently decided to change my words to Life is worth living but then scribbled it out because I didn’t feel sincere knowing that I was not living the way people might think I meant the words to mean. So right now I am thinking of some new words and I think it will hopefully be original instead of corny.

I have made the stars

I made the stars

They twinkle as I blink

And all those feelings that night brings

I share with you out of the goodness of my heart

I give you everything the night brings

I make the night dark

You light the night up with energy

The energy sparks romances

Creates kisses, touches, and strange feelings

Sitting in cafes,

Lying in beds,

Skipping in parks.

I made the night. You made it everything more.