Pomegranate

Hello sweet catastrophe,
Bitterness of the lime skin is how you taste.
Bitter like a broken man sitting on the steps,

Broken, uneven, yet ripened with youth.

Ripened like a scandalous, tantalizing pomegranate.

Scandalously concealing....

...most bitterest of you. (Hehe)

I am not a fool. But I don't know what else can be said and done.

But I am grateful He showed me. I'd rather be shown truth than live a lie. And I know I am not being tested anymore than I can handle. And I know He still loves me, because I've been selfish and obnoxious. He is just trying to make me have a stronger Iman. Reminding that I will one day return to Him.

Everything will be ok InsyaAllah. I just need patience. And to lose my watermelon ego.

Romanticism

Above is Casper David Friedrich's Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog

The Romantic period was an era of 'imagination and intuition'. Of yearning and of uncertainty.

We're all inner romanticists aren't we?
The painting is just really cool, that is all.
Comparable to the image on the top right hand corner, perhaps.

Allegory of the Ship

For as long as we remember, we were convinced to step aboard the ship. Endeavoured by the fire nourished by the thoughts we always had of an unmistakeable escapade. We’re sailing away. Without a compass, and surrounded by the vastness of blue. Chasing horizons, after horizons. Leaving behind nothing more than trails of momentary waves. 

& maybe someday, we’ll return again to the coast where we started from.

Wrinkled, and grey haired.
Standing at the starboard deck of the ship,
Stepping out to same dock, where we stood once before we left.

Marveling at how nothing has changed,
But we’re somebody else now.

Violet

I'd like to be purple,
Like the violets of Saratoga
Fragrant like the spring
& docile like the wind.
Surrounded by blue Ulysses,
Fluttering their silky wings around me.

Wilted once crimson

Abandoned mailbox,
Of shredded post-cards
The truth is canvassed in red paint on the wall,

Into a vacant apartment off Vindicated Boulevard
She says the the ticking clock is misleading.

Concrete balcony,
Smudged with sublime,
Some things in this world she cannot steal,
The rotary telephone collecting dust
Long since it once would ring.

Pulled the sun into the blinds
By the brown wilted once crimson rose,
She left the broken glasses and a note.
There's much left, 

Too much,
& much too real.

I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm just going to hide under my bed now.
Goodbye.

Dear Beethoven,

Once upon a sixth-grader, I underestimated your prodigious talent. I blamed your frizzly hair, furrowed brow-fierceness and antiquity for the love-hate relationship we shared. The flutist who played Allegretto from Symphony no. 7 every Remembrance Day would turn purple from running out of breath. Your harmonic notes were draggy, long, and painfully depressing. But I played with some pride nonetheless, because your music gave me goosebumps, and I felt honored to be performing one of your many 'terrifying' masterpieces.

Of course, like every cynical pre-teenager, I declared your mainstream pieces (Symphony no. 5, Fur Elise and the Choral finale of Symphony no. 9) overrated and overused. I wondered what listeners found meaningful in such repetitive and lyric-free music. I have always considered myself a lyric-analyst. That the prerequisite of good music requires meaningful lyrical value. Playing classical music was as good as learning Latin as a language in the 21st century. I would rather have played the Titanic theme song, or an American Tail's piece Somewhere Out There. Music with modern structures and relevance, rather than 'dead-men-chamber-music' like yours.

Centered at the Tabaret hall, among white arches of Roman pillars that emphasized Romanticism. The cello and the piano.The simplicity, contrast and awkwardness of two instruments originally doubted the credibility of your pieces. Yet, you amaze me. With your sneaky style, and purposefully inconsistent and silly tone in Allegro Molto. And your capability to seize my thoughts to drift with every flowing note you've ever written in the Sonata in A major-Opus 69. Your moods synchronized with memories that were subconsciously lying around. That with each key stroke of the piano a piece of history would lift itself off my mind causing my heart to flutter away freely. There were moments I felt ecstatically light and within seconds, you'd transition my happiness to yearning then anger and borderline deprivation to melancholy sinking my heart to my stomach. I watched a grey-haired man in blue sweater who sat diagonally across me moved to tears.

Dear Beethoven, you were unpredictable. Yet powerful. Like the cellist playing pizzicato with his thumb, you meddled with my thoughts and emotion. I suppose you may say, I experienced what it's like to be bi-polar and overwhelmed with every emotions at once with your music. 

Perhaps appreciation comes with age. Like the cellist personally described to me when I personally thanked him after the show, "it comes from the heart". Music is a language itself, it speaks to emotions. And you, Beethoven, have taught me the meaning of life with your music. Through the uncertainty, unpredictability, instability, yet capability to find love, happiness and meaning.....all which are reflected in the pieces you've written.

I don't think you're overrated now. Losing your sense of hearing, yet persevering with passiom....I don't think we have a love-hate relationship anymore.  =]

With love,

-your once-flutist.

P.S. you were surprisingly hot when you were my age, at least, before you turned frowny-scary. Sexy sideburns, I must add...

Quintessence

How long ago.
You have forgotten;
Since you walked free,
And the cavity in your chest-
Fills with red passion of healthy-

Lamp Post

Windowsill, you taught me
To notice the yellow line of asphalt
The frontier and segregation
Between, forward and backward.

A rear view mirror is precarious,
But the windshield is more promising,
& with every passing streetlight,
Flickers a beacon of indulgence.

Yet, windowsill, sojourn my wander-
And dauntless mind to delude
How pitiful, my heart sits
Cumbersome to the thought

Of outrageous 

& silly freedom.

Special Shout Out

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DINAH!

=) Stay silly.

Love you

-Kakak

Shaf learns to rock

Michael Learns to Rock is singing That's Why (You Go Away) in the background. And somewhere in the back of my head, memories are flooding making my heart do that 'silly-sinking-feeling-thing'. I remember sitting on my aunt's couch on weekends, from sleeping over every Friday nights. While my parents would roam around and catch a midnight movie someplace. They were so in love, like they were still dating each other. I'd be on the couch, singing from the albums of this band with my uncle and aunty Saturday mornings. It was almost routine that they'd babysit Irah and I every Fridays and Saturdays. It was my favorite routine for sure.

It was from singing the lyrics of the karaoke songs that I learned to read. That, and from the shelves of Archie's Comics uncle would have on his shelves. He'd let me pick one up and read to him on the big black couch where only guests would sit. I miss this very much.

Michael Learns to Rock is stupidly making me want to be six again and singing in my Mickey Mouse shorts with aunty and uncle.

I miss them. So, very, very, much.

Lady Justice

Blindfold, and a weighing scale
 A symbol of senselessness to identity
Eyes closed from the world that I see 
Tell me how justice is within your reach?

 Where does my dear friend, morality, sits? Why blindness as a prerequisite for impartiality? Blindness is ignorance. Ignorance of race, class and gender for the reason of equality. Is it possible for justice to be accomplished with ignorance? Maybe, Lady Justice, you should unveil your eyes. See the world they way I see. For a certain race, a certain class, and a certain gender has been a constant target of the law. 'Justified' as an act of serving justice.

The rich remains the ruler for which the poor are subservient to. As such the law is a tool that exploits, with your eyes blinded by the cloth. Perhaps, Lady Justice, you were personified out of jest. As a subtle insult to your womanhood, to prove emotional-driven 'irrationality' that may exist if your eyes were opened. As a fallacious symbol to justify justice as 'objective', by those who exploit power. You are just a symbol of human imperfection that exists, to me.

But silly thing, I may so say. That despite your eyes blinded to signify objectivity, there is universality in the heart of every individual. We seek the same basic justice, peace, love and harmony. But it is our subjective perception of the world we hopelessly think, will take us there differently. So maybe, open your eyes Lady Justice, and see. Open your eyes to see and understand diversity. Because everybody has a story.

  You've been blindfolded for  much too long now.

Edge of town

There were four of us. Four cups of steaming hot cocoa, smothered in swirly whipped cream. One of us is the sweetest, like a sunshine she is always smiling. One of us is the enthusiast, always finding ways to keep things light with her sense of humor. One of us is maternal, the careful but compassionate one who is a listener. One of us is me. But what all four of us have in common is fragility, uncertainty, hopes and ambitiousness.

We sat at the same cafe I roamed around last year. At the edge of Byward Market, sandwiched between an expensive chocolate shop and the Beavertails stand.

Two years ago, in high school, I thought about sipping from a steaming cup with my girl friends at the edge of town. It was a silly rite of passage to womanhood I read from a book with the title I can't recall. Geographically, Byward Market is the edge of Ottawa as the opposite is the city of Gatineau. I fulfilled that rite of passage last night. Along with indulging for the first time, the colourful French Macarons (yummy).  =)

To more happy memories such as these.

The Regime

=] I vacuumed my room feeling like a villain destroying all the dust-bunnies under my bed and all four corners of the room after class last night. Actually, what I thought about while swiveling around my yellow vacuum cleaner was my mom. Only mama would vacuum the house at the most oddest time of day. And I caught myself turning to be like her...which I absolutely don't mind at all.

I switched my furnitures around and now I have my bed facing the TV. No more awkwardly positioning myself to watch reruns of Law and Order. My room looks a little less spacious, a little less empty, and more cozy. Psychologically, it helps with my "new-beginning-change-but-still-the-same" regime

Right now, I sit across the big windows across the Food Court after my Issues in Popular Music lecture, waiting for my friend. Music in Romantic Era at 8:30am tomorrow has me worried about waking up so early. I am not so much of an early bird. But 2 music classes to fulfill my culture and communications electives, 3 law classes and a philosophy of feminism class....it will be a fun semester!

So all the classes will basically polish up bits and pieces of feminism, musician and legal nerd me. 

Operation ULTIMATE "new-beginning-change-but-still-the-same" regime is going smoothly thus far.