Waiting IV

“
And I've been waiting in the weeds
Waiting for the summer rain to fall upon the
Wild birds scattering the seeds
Answering the calling of the tide's eternal tune
The phases of the moon
The chambers of the heart
The egg and dart of small gray
Spiders spinning in the dark
In spite of all the times the web is torn apart
“

You like him. You hate him. He likes you, a lot. He annoys you. What appeared to be attraction in the beginning has turned into a game where you dictate the moves. You grow power-hungry in the presence of an opportunity to be in control. You start to see him for who he really is; quite different from the guy you first liked. You two start to slip away from each other. It’s over before you knew it.

Meanwhile, I wait.

You acknowledge my presence, with a hint of regret when you think about what we might have become. You like me. You say you like me to me, knowing full well I can do nothing about your attraction to me, or mine to you.

You try to tame me with a net of flattery. You talk to me, a lot, making no secret of your feelings towards me. You say you want to see me but you never do.

“
And I've been waiting in the weeds
Waiting for my time to come around again and
Hope is floating on the breeze
Carrying my soul high up above the ground and
I've been keepin' to myself
Knowin' that the seasons are slowly changing
Even though you're with somebody else
He'll never love you like I do
“

I’m done waiting.

*lyrics by the Eagles

Waiting III

“
And I've been waiting in the weeds
Waiting for the dust to settle down along the
Back roads running through the fields
Lying on the outskirts of this lonesome town
And I imagine sunlight in your hair
You're at the county fair

You're holding hands and laughing
And now the ferris wheel has stopped
You're swinging on the top
Suspended there with him

And he's the darling of the chic
The flavor of the week is melting
Down your pretty summer dress
Baby, what a mess you're making
“

And all I do is listen, trying my utmost to appear interested in her affairs, while feeling a painful torment knowing that I’m not ‘that guy’, and will never be her guy. You might ask, why would I put myself through such torture? I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. Attraction is a weird thing.

I was her flavor of the week. The darling of the chic. A toy. A James Patterson novel that gets tossed after being flipped through once. I’d occasionally get picked up and be skimmed, before being set aside again for something more interesting.

But alas, no. Your conscience-free way of living your life will not affect me for long. Don’t get me wrong. You’ve never wronged me directly. Or maybe you have, but in easily deniable ways on your part. It is just who you are.

Where does this leave me? Nowhere, almost literally. Your mannerisms are disdainful. Your elegance non-existent. Your melancholy is pretentious. Your conversations with me adds nothing to my being. Sometimes I feel you function more as an audience for me than as a friend. You laugh when we talk, much more so than I. You’re like a wall that takes in my wit but doesn’t feed it back, but occasionally drops rocks onto my head.

I wonder if I should pull the plug. Love is a fun game to play if you know the stakes. Now that I know what I am to her, I perhaps can deal with it when I see her. But it’s difficult suppressing a side of me that views her with contempt and condescension.

It’s time to dim the lights.

“
I've been stumbling through some dark places
Now I'm following the plow
I know I've fallen out of your good graces
It's alright now
“

*lyrics by the Eagles

Waiting II

“
I've been biding time with the crows and sparrows
While peacocks prance and strut upon the stage
If finding love is just a dance
Proximity and chance
You will excuse me if I skip the masquerade
“

She calls me, and calls me often. She talks to me about everything from mundane supermarket shopping to her most personal affairs. This guy that guy. That guy cute guy. The other guy that she wants to pry. The guy for whom she cries.

What does it say about someone if she feels completely comfortable with divulging her intimate details you, but more importantly, that she thinks you’d be interested in hearing all – and I mean all – of it? To be honest, I was interested, at least enough to listen to her talk about her life for hours, all the while I have to insert the occasional witty, humorous comment. But I think there’s a certain point in which I think it’s strange for her to tell me all these things. After all, I’ve only known her for a few months, and I went from being a stranger to a close friend.

Waiting...

“

It's comin' on the end of August

Another summer's promise almost gone

And though I heard some wise man say

That every dog will have his day

He never mentioned that these dog days get so long

I don't know when I realized the dream was over

Well, there was no particular hour, no given day

You know, it didn't go down in flame

There was no final scene, no frozen frame

I just watched it slowly fade away

“

I like her. I’m sure I do. But it’s useless to tell her, because she doesn’t like me. I wait. For what? For her to change her mind? For a replacement so I can take my mind off? For myself to give up?

She’s smart. She’s independent. She’s witty. And she parties hard. But there is not connection between us. None. My turn will never come, and she will go away.

Am I a coward for not being able to express to her my true feelings? Would that only have made things awkward, in which case maybe our friendship falls into jeopardy? I always tell my friends “don’t think, just do.” With her, I thought too much.

*lyrics by the Eagles

Impact II

It was late at night, surprisingly calm. One of those days where the daytime was bombarded by rainstorms, and completely dies out during the night. It was also one of those odd days where my friend and myself elected to brave the stormy weather to indulge in an outdoor activity. It was fun, though. Sport is all about the fun, especially when you don’t care about the results.

I was driving home from a friend’s house after spending two hours watching “Band of Brothers”. Regardless of one’s mood, the show can never be taken lightly; it is perhaps as accurate as it gets, in terms of a filmed war motion picture. But historical accuracy aside, “Band of Brothers” tells a story, a story of brotherhood, of compatriotism, of a bond that cannot be comprehended by the average citizen.

So I drove, emotionally drained and somberly entertained. I accelerated to merge onto the highway and onto the Port Mann Bridge.

And it happened.

I was halfway into the merging lane; I turned to my left to shoulder check, briefly seeing a car changing to the left lane so I could merge. When I turned back, I saw an image of a little girl walking right into the path of my car. She was clad in a white sleeping gown, long, dark brunette hair blowing in the air. She couldn’t have been older than twelve, oh gosh.

She was staring out into the distance, to my left. Then she turned and faced my car and our eyes met for just a split second before I drove through her. I felt the ghost of her body passing through me as I drove by. My eyes widened, I had trouble breathing, and I felt paralyzed. All I could enable myself to do at that moment was place both hands on the wheel and gasp for air.

I drove home like this the rest of the way, both hands gripping on the steering wheel as hard as possible, fearing that I might suddenly lose the grip and the car would go spinning and doing multiple flips.

I have never hit anyone directly while driving, so I am not sure what that was about. If it was foreshadowing a future event, then I might as well crash into a tree, get my license rescinded, to prevent an imminent catastrophe.

What especially haunts me about this incident is that it was not I who was the victim in this vision / hallucination; the person being crushed into oblivion was someone else, the facelessness of her signifying the fact that it could be anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Impact

Every so often it happens.

The location is usually a café; it seems to occur more often outside my home. I’d be sitting, reading the chosen material of the day (the material itself is irrelevant, whether if it’s school related or not), sipping my overpriced caffeinated beverage and trying to focus.

Then it happens.

My senses are heightened; I’d see and hear things clearer than usual. I begin to feel restless, and try harder to focus on the words on the pages.

Impact.

A sudden moment of hallucinated blunt force trauma… I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of my car; I see a vehicle – a motorbike, a sedan, even a truck (on a bad day) – ramming right into me. The collisions are usually either head-on or at an angle. T-bones are rare. The moment of impact always shakes me to the core, often causing me to get bit nauseas.

It’s as if I’m driving into a brick wall; or perhaps more accurate, a brick wall driving into me, shattering all of the car’s metal, plastic, and glass, and crumbling all of my bones. It’s like a piece of glass mirror slamming hard onto the sidewalk, or perhaps, more eerily accurate, a blind side open ice hit by Scott Stevens.

It is foolish for me to suggest it as a symptom of any medical condition. However, these occasional ‘impact’ incidents did not occur until my accident over 2 years ago.

The car was totaled, but I moved on, mentally and physically. Yet I feel like I’m being struck by an eighteen-wheeler every now and then, my car and body crushed into oblivion…

Sometimes the results of these impacts can get ugly (think Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men”). My arm is snapped in two, almost. A dangling limp with blood and flesh splattered on my lap and the bone clearly visible, snapped unnaturally like a tree branch broken by bare hands.

Usually though, the feeling is usually more sick to my stomach. My lungs cringe. My ribcage collapsing on itself, to the point where I vomit blood.

And then, after those few seconds of lucid agony, all would once again be well. Calm. Peaceful.

Until the next Impact.

... in a Burning Room

"
I'll make the most of all the sadness,
You'll be a bitch because you can.

You try to hit me just to hurt me
So you leave me feeling dirty
Because you can't understand.
"

It was a cold night. The heat was on full blast. The city lights beamed me a welcome as I entered what passes to be a metropolis.

As I drove through downtown, I took note of the big signs advertising the products in vogue, simulacrums for the venom we've come to embrace as consumerism. I gazed at them, disgusted by the commercialized capitalist culture that defines us while hypocritically admitting my desire to indulge in it.

Bright lights a few blocks down. At first I thought it was a bonfire of celebration, but as I neared I realized it was a building on fire, smoke rising and disappearing into the night sky.

I approached the scene. The flames have just about consumed the building in its entirety. Firefighters watched in vain as the structure slowly crumbled.

I rolled down the window, expecting to hear screams of agony and cries for the lost of loved ones. I heard nothing. Nothing, except for the crackling of the flames and the pieces of falling debris. The sirens were muted. They were unnecessary.

Death was in the air. We all felt haunted, but our eyes remained fixated on the fire. What is so fascinating about death? What is death? Is death signified by the stopping of the heart, the identification of a corpse, or the complete disacknowledgement of the person's existence? The fire victims might have perished, but they left behind ideas, memories, and legacies. Are they 'dead'?

On the other side of the road, on the ledge overlooking the bay, stood a man. I watched as he lit a cigarette and stared into the night sky. Something about him told me to keep looking.

He jumped.

"
Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
"

Slow Dancing...

"
It's not a silly little moment,
It's not the storm before the calm.
This is the deep and dying breath of
This love that we've been working on.

Can't seem to hold you like I want to
So I can feel you in my arms.
Nobody's gonna come and save you,
We pulled too many false alarms.

We're going down,
And you can see it too.
We're going down,
And you know that we're doomed.
My dear,
We're slow dancing in a burning room.
"

My heart is engulfed in flames. My hands tremble. I feel heated all over but I don't sense a single drop of sweat.

In a true moment of synesthesia, the sound of her words appeared before my eyes. The barrage of colors attacked me, before settling down to sinister-looking letters. I closed my eyes, but they remained.

I'm standing across the hall, isolated from the carnage. I see them, holding each other, smiling, completely oblivious to the world crumbling around them.

I want to rush to help, but I am immobilized by the most powerful anesthesia. And it seems like they don't need my help, anyway.

What is morality to them? I don't know. Perhaps they are amoral creatures putting their ids on full display.

She turns and looks at me. I gaze back. The fire was closing in on them. She gives me a faint smile. I turned and walked away.

By the time I turned around the building was but a pile of rubble and ash. And yet I could feel they lived on.

It's a cold night. I light my last cigarette, and stare out into the gloomy city skyline. The words that I saw lingering in my head.

I close my eyes, and jump

"
go cry about it, why don't you?
"

*quoted lyrics courtesy of John Mayer*

Two in My Life

Girls, that is.

Two is the number. Not one, not three, two. Three would be easier because it means I legitimately have choices, and I would have less problems choosing one to develop feelings for. Or, to put it another way, I would have no problem having feelings for any one of them. One is also simpler because it means I like no one else but that girl. No interruptions, simple attraction.

But the problem is I don’t really have two to choose from right now. The number ‘two’ is a façade.

It’s more like… one and another-not-so-much, or one and a half, if you may.

One likes me, and has liked me for a while. But I feel like she is slipping away because she likes another guy. She met him after me, and has great times with him every time they go out. The times she and I spend together are less adventurous or fun-filled. It’s more about intimacy; but of course there’s a fine line between being intimate and being flat out boring.

I like her, too, but not enough to commit into a real relationship with her. Yet I still want to spend time with her. So began a game of poisonous proportions that is increasingly stressing me out

.

The other girl… does like not like me, and thus is not slipping away in any sense, since I never had a grip on her to begin with. I try hard not to like this girl, but I am attracted to her in ways I can’t describe.

One is passionate, non-conforming, and tries hard to be original. One could argue that she tries too hard. She’s unaware of this, of course: a relentless pursuit to be original sometimes just turns out lame and, well, intolerant.

The other is passionate and non-conforming, but in subtle ways. She doesn’t necessarily proclaim herself to be original, but she does what she wants without (implicitly) seeking the approval of others.

One is young in the mind, innocence emanating from her expressions. She thinks she’s strong mentally and emotionally and has a firm understanding what she has gotten herself into. She thinks she’s been through a lot. Maybe she has. I have my doubts.

The other is more mature; the way she handles herself spells of someone who has experience in life. But I see innocence in her that she fights to cover up. Unlike the other girl, she understands her situations a tad clearer (actually clear). But the fatal flaw is that she flaunts her understanding to the point of abusing it, hurting people immensely in the process. Only her feelings mattered. Hers alone.

One is a ‘good’ girl. As much as she hates to do it, she by in large listens to her parents. She fervently rejects certain bad habits and personality traits. ( But strangely enough, she has suggested I adopt one of those bad habits).

The other is not a bad girl. But she does have some questionable habits and lifestyle issues. I take issue with these habits, yet I still like her. That’s why I’m so confused.

So much for their differences. While they are polar opposites, they are also eerily similar:

They’re both not very tolerant or accepting; this can perhaps be attributed to their pursuit to be original and non-conforming. They know what they want, and the work hard to get it, but often lost in the process is what the others want.

By intolerance I do not mean that they stereotype or discriminate against others, but rather inconsideration: the inability to embrace ideas suggested by others. Ideas are deaf to them unless they came up with them, then it’s somehow great and brilliant. These ideas that I mention are not grand, they are anything ranging from interests in books, music, movies, or politics. If they like them (certain movies, authors, musician), they are awesome. My suggestions are almost automatically ignored.

They have both mastered the art of reverting everything I say to being about them. And they’re always right about everything.

This flaw that they share bothers me incredibly. They both believe that the world centers around them, that they ought to get what they want. They don’t care much about how others feel. They say they do. They don’t.

Intimacy for them mean different things. They’re casual, but not in the same way. The first girl links intimacy with attraction. I have no idea what intimacy means with the second girl. Absolutely none.

They both breathe an air of arrogance that greatly antagonizes people. Their self-importance, self-righteousness, and over confidence might cause some to call them a bitch. I happen to be a firm believer in a fine line between confidence and arrogance, a line that they cross all too often.

Along with this arrogance is a stubbornness that appears less as perseverance and more pompous. Their unwillingness to compromise rids them of whatever humility they have.

So where does this leave me? Somehow, I believe that if I try had to spark a relationship with the first girl she will pick me over the other guy. But I don’t want to do that.

There is almost no chance of me being with the other girl, either. She does not like me in that way; she likes others, but not enough for to dive into a relationship. I don’t know why I like her.

My option is perhaps to shut myself out, to the first girl; feelings might get hurt if I keep this up. The other girl is just a friend.