Crossing the Rubicon

Anonymous asked: fuck you, why are you so good in writing?

I don’t think I’m good yet, but hopefully I’m getting there. Thank you for the mixed compliment though. :))

Anonymous asked: keep writing, don't stop

Thank you. I don’t intend to. :)

Racing Raindrops

There’s a lady that sits upon the sunset horizon. Her hair eclipsing the fading sun, blazing up the sky in her bright orange glow.

There’s a girl that dances on the midnight horizon. Her hips swaying to the rhythm of her own eclectic beat, blurring that division between heaven and earth.

There’s a woman that sleeps on the dawn horizon. Her subconscious mind dreaming up a world where tomorrow is another wish granted, and yesterday another fond memory.

Santuario De San Juan on All Soul’s Day

There’s a buzz saturating the air in the small plaza of Santuario De San Juan. It’s early afternoon, and families are making their way through the iron gates along the building’s rustic facade, amidst candle vendors solemnly hollering out their wares. Families mill into the pavilion, eyes darting about in search of their passed loved ones. Lolas pray rosaries. Titos and Titas exchange enthusiastic tsismis between mysteries. Children groan as they stare longingly at the displays of the ice cream vendors outside.

For a place so often associated with death, the air here is almost deafening with the sounds of life.

The Question

Cold air rushes in through semi-clenched teeth as he looks up into the vastness of the night sky. The wind seems to utter pain in his ears. For a moment, it is dark. Then he begins to see through the veil. He sees the universe. The mathematically improbable, logically impossible space we all claim to be part of. But are we? Really? We as a people are collectively as much a part of this leviathan entity as a pebble is part of Mt. Everest, even less so. Yet we have the audacity to claim ownership of it all. He imagines all of this… and he is scared, overwhelmed by the immensity of this life and how insignificant his niche in this universe turns out to be. Unbeknownst to him six billion other conscious minds join him, or perhaps he joins them, in this quest of why’s. His knees grow weak under the weightlessness of his non-existence. And as the stars fill his vision like so many accusing eyes on a blank canvas, he stops and wonders. Why in the f-ck am I here?

Why do I live? Why do I love and lose, and suffer and celebrate? To what end do I exist? Thousands are born and die in a day, what difference does it make? I’m just a data point, a statistic. I grow and learn and work and die - another cog in the novelty contraption of human society. Do my actions have any far-reaching ramifications in history, in the universe? Even the great Egyptians left nothing more than crumbling triangles in a desert. What makes me so special? What makes my life so worth living? What do I have to offer to the cosmos that would actually matter?

Head tilted up, he drops his jaw and expels his frustrations into the chilly night air. Every bit of emotion, flung out into the world - the galaxy - directed at the stars, the celestials, the good-for-nothing suns of a thousand worlds. He unleashes all.

Somewhere lightyears away, another who stands gazing into the heavens picks up a draft. He shudders and, watching the celestials drift about, sees through the veil and asks-

Why?

Five Hundred Days

His name is like a freakin switch. One second I’m on this incredible high and the next, reality sets in. 

She’s not mine. I’m just borrowing her. 

This is all a joke - this love business - just like any other joke. Only difference here is, no one’s laughing.

Answer: 42

There is a popular school of thought that portrays life as a timeline; a straight dash connecting one’s triumphant birth to his inevitable death. It displays everything we do as another individual rung in the six-foot ladder leading down to our personalized beds of eternal sleep. It is a finite process, much like a badly organized experiment. Each human being, subject to different influences and backgrounds, each time, ending up with a unique corpse, just begging to rot in its proud individualism. During its brief span, life urges us to reach for the impossible, to attain immortality through our legacies. It smiles us its mocking jest as it promises with crossed fingers that hundreds of years from now, people will remember us for something. This idea welcomes us to be our own persons, to blaze new trails, to discover new wonders…all for what? So that we may end up as proud, accomplished additions to a rut of decomposing dead.

Another idea stands in stark contrast to this. Here, we see life as a circle. A grand recording of template situations and stock experiences put on loop. Monotony is key to yielding consistent products after all. Now, why would I favor a view that makes us all out to be generic products on an assembly line -factory-produced nothings? Would you prefer to live as Macbeth’s brief candle; dead before anyone noticed you were ever there? Or wouldn’t you rather be a faceless blur, milling about day after day. Dull, yes, but with purpose! Because we are all the same, we can work together. Although we accomplish little, in the long term, our contributions are vital to the success of a larger scale goal. Leftist? Maybe. But you can’t deny that I’m wrong. Right?

Life is a spark; an ember. It is a tiny flame, fragile but powerful; the potential of which all too easy to put out, but impossible to contain once realized. Even a match can start a forest fire. Life is all about inspiration. Physics speaks of the presence of a law that obliges every act to have an equal and opposite reaction. When we speak, someone listens. When we paint, someone sees. When we write, someone reads. Our ideas are not ours to keep, but to project to the world, allowing others to take them to develop into something new. One’s artistic masterpiece is the sum total of his life. We attain apotheosis through self-expression. The eight-legged horse bows to the whims of the poet- the artist. Our mortal span is but the first step; death, a slight detour from which we kickstart our true lives. We live forever in our legacies.

What is life? Life is nothing, and it is everything. To understand it, we must accept that it is incomprehensible. Life is precious. Pandora’s pretty little paradox. It’s true beauty lies in its mystery. Who am I to take away the fun?

Teenage Dream

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Love is not blind. It is blinding.

That beauty once held in such high regard,

Turns out to be a wolf parading in stolen hides.

Perhaps it had not always been that way.

Things do change after all. For better or for worse.

Till death. Change nonetheless.

Moving along with the shifting theme,

Her image transformed in the mind of a former flame.

Love turns to pain turns to hate turns to apathy turns to regret.

A new image comes to light; A faint line dividing love and hate, one easily broken by misguided passion.

You see, life is a trapeze act. 

We urge ourselves forward, knowing that each step could send us hurtling to our doom. 

It is a sad truth that a love lost often attaches to one’s identity.

To the point where -who you loved- becomes -who you are-

The paragon of past paramours become parallaxes of your own paralogisms.

I do not move to make things as they were.

My regret is not directed to the end.

The dissapointment lies at its beginning.

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**Wrote the first stanza a little over a year ago, and decided to finish it during Lit class this morning. 

Anonymous asked: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UP-Praxis-1st-Essay-Competition/130588033672726

You would be great. I personally love your work! Keep writing! :)

Thank you so much! Really appreciate it :). I checked out the link to the competition you posted up there. It seems really interesting. Thanks for the heads up!