Wednesday 29 December 2010

insomelancholia



"you have a tendency towards sadness"
this is what had been said.
and it lingered and echoed in the canals of her mind.
She hated to admit it. She hadn't when it was first said.
(but she didn't deny it either)

Why?
Why the melancholic disposition?
Why the want and desire to be happy, and yet so easily shattered into states of sadness and loneliness and, and , and ...

And why were the most drastic of states nearly always linked to sleepless nights. When all is quiet outside, everyone tucked away in their bed, or in a car, or in a bar, or someone else's bed for that matter.

Could it be that the white noise that accompanies reality and her day-to-day is turned off with the lack of street noise and television and people living, that the echoes of the canals become inevitably louder and clearer and unavoidable?

Ok. So assume that is why. Why always the thoughts that mellow her out in some sense, and the ones that plant the doubts and the insecurities and the questions and the looping loopholes? But then again... that's a rhetorical and, it's safe to say, ridiculous question. That's just what the white noise leaves behind.

"Smile baby. Why don't you smile?"

She doesn't know. She wants to!
you must believe her
Perhaps somewhere, sometimes not alway, she tunes into a frequency of her own without being aware of it herself.
And it makes her not smile. She has every reason to. But she doesn't. It's stuck like a frog in a throat.

That frequency frequents the quiet nights quite often

"They should find a cure for insomelancholia..."
she mumbles under her breath, as she turns over onto her other side for the nth time.
"..and a disease that makes you smile."

Friday 17 December 2010

between this line and that line lies your salvation



- "So, I have a problem. Theres this thing."

- "A "thing"?"

- "Yea. A thing. Theres this thing I'm dealing with..."

- "Ooh. A 'thing'. Those are nasty. "

- ".. And it's making me feel like this..."

- "This! holy shit!"

- "And I hate feeling like this, you know? It just gives way to that, and before you know it, that turns into those, and those are never good 'cos those make me fall into these.. And I hate these and those and feeling like that and it's all because a stupid fucking thing that really shouldn't be anything. "

- "Right, right... "

- "And when I tell them about it, they just tell me what I know about it, about this thing. And how it is. I KNOW what it is. For godsake if I didn't know what it is it wouldn't be a thing and I wouldn't feel like this, you know? They don't get that I know what IT IS. i want to know how it ISN'T. Man fuck this. Seriously. What is this thing that won't let me be that! It can't be so complicated so that this is what it is. Can it be all that? I'm giving myself a goddamn headache... and over what? ..."

-"... Over it?"

- "Yea. yea. That. I should be over it. I should just get fucking over it."

Tuesday 7 December 2010

I once heard... About the green-eyed monster


I once heard about a green-eyed monster that dwelled on the outskirts of a town somewhere in the plains of a Mediterranean country a long, long time ago.

I heard that it balanced on a the tapering coil of its lower body, that resembled the body of a snake, and when wasn't slithering from one place to another just like one, stood at a height close to that of a large man.
It had a top heavy body that was covered in a thick coat of matted grey-green fur that was anything but inviting to the touch, and had two horns that protruded menacingly out of its spine upwards. A thin scrawny neck held up its lizard like head that was crowned with another bony spike at the forehead. Its mouth was said to house few but fierce teeth that guarded a tongue that was forked not once (as though that wasn't enough), but two fold. And as for its wide nostrils, they fluttered and flittered with every breath emitting a low rasp that rippled and disturbed the space around it.

But these details seldom stuck in those rare sightings. It was the glaring green eye that was paramount.
It's emerald glare was bewitching, so I'd heard, and no one had ever seen such a deep, fascinating colour ever exist, and never would do so ever again.
They say that despite the unsightly appearance of the monster, the eye itself held such a captivating beauty that any fear that would naturally materialise at encountering a beast as repulsive as this dissipated into welcome paralysis.

And it was with this paralysis that the beast cast it's infamous poison. It was not a poison that ran through its fangs. Nor one that it spat out of its gruesome mouth. It didn't run through your veins, or seep into your skin. It was far, far worse.
It plagued your mind. It planted eggs of doubt, envy and madness. It fleshed out detailed visions that shook its victim to the core, riddled with lies and falsity so calculated and devious there was not much hope of turning a blind eye.

It didn't matter what age, race, or sex you were. You could've been a young boy pining over your friend's marbles, or a young girl who envied her sister's happy relationship, or a mother who is jealous of her neighbours fine linens. It didn't matter. You were all prey to the same green-eyed demon and its blight.

They say its first ever victims were a married couple it had shadowed unnoticed, slithering around their modest house on the outskirts of that Mediterranean town. It had cast the fear of infidelity on the wife after catching her eye as she picked apples from the garden, haunting her with concocted images of her husband's betrayal, of his lust for other women that lived in their town. The monster went as far as to feign strange perfumes that wafted by her nose when her husband passed her, driving her into a rage that bubbled under her skin silently. After that, the slime that had infected her simply fed on itself, snowballing and infecting her senses. Her vision was now distorted, catching inexistent glances between her husband and the inn keeper. She confronted her him time over time, the episodes were long winded and loud, their incessant yells heard throughout the neighborhood, to the pleasure of a low shadow that slithered under the winter logs in the backyard.

They say it wasn't long before the thunder and the roar subsided into a shower of red.
And they were found the next day, murdered by their own hands, but guided by the venom of another. It is rumored that one of the townsfolk, a wood cutter, glimpsed something as it was slithering away leaving a trail of blood, and guided by pure reflex brought down his axe. With a screech that quickly disappeared into the nearby bushes, all that remained was the furry tapered tail of something that was never there.

I've heard that the next time the green-eyed monster was sighted, two golden rings circled its scraggy neck, and although exaggerated in dimension, they say they were the wedding rings of that very same destroyed marriage; a sick token, a bloody keepsake.

I once heard of the one and only green-eyed monster, the one who started all the jealousy-driven woes in the world, all with one long stare of its brilliant green eye.