Ulisces

I conquer the world to a slow dance,

bring a city to its knees like a lullaby -

hurl the concrete with my whirlwind romance;

use eighty-eight keys as my alibi.

Something's twisted in the mirror though;

the sullied suffocation of Dorian Gray -

exonerated, I made it but belated, go

ignite the suspicions that will light my way

home to a perfection I never knew existed.

At this top of the world I will plant my flag,

strip all of the stars that ever tried to resist it,

bottle them and sell them in a brown paper bag.

If this is all porcelain, I'll crack it like I did,

sprinkle its dust across the grand piano,

turn around and start chasing diamonds instead.

I can't stop playing to 34% of Diageo

and I'll always be addicted to reminding you

of your flaws. So baby, give me another shot

in my arms between the altar and the pew;

confessional: dear Lord, I gave it all that I got.

If this is the closing of the chapter, song - Søren, dare

tell me not to feel sorry curled around the toilet that night?

Hold that thought - I looked down at my superman underwear

and suddenly knew that everything was always gonna be alright.

Five and a Half

Each living moment becomes the past, and the past becomes who we are, and who we are defines what the future will bring. And then the future becomes the present, and the present the past, and the past who we are, and in this way we never stop growing and changing. And so, we can never abandon the past, we can never stop looking towards the future, and we can never stop living in the present.

Just a thought,

since, as of late,

my present has been mingling with my past and changing the future in every which way.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I am so, so, so incredibly excited.

:D

The Beauty of Each Puzzle Piece

A tuxedoed man with his well-oiled hair combed back in the lobby of the Wynn Las Vegas stands his bass upright and begins plucking.

A woman wearing a soiled red jacket and sunglasses to feign blindness on Nanjing Road in Shanghai unpacks her pipa and begins to play.

An unshaven man wearing a dark green beanie and grey rain jacket boards the metro at Gare Montparnasse in Paris and begins playing his accordion.

A slim woman wearing a flowing black dress sits upright in the Teatro Municipal of Santiago and begins to play her violin.

An elderly man wearing a loose traditional gown in Yaoundé's Mfoundi Market picks up a djembe and begins to tap away.

A young girl in an orange sari peeks out at the sky from under her shanty in Chennai and begins to sing.

And I, wearing an undershirt and sweatpants in a St. Louis dorm room, listen carefully, for across the lines that divide our world rushes the flow of music, and it is beautiful.

But even though this is one world, each place really does have its own sensibility. Footsteps are left to different beats, and the sun casts shadows of different colors.

Each new place is a learning experience, and sometimes staying in one place for too long can be disillusioning, or just get plain old.

I wanna get out and learn.

Music

If you know me, it goes without saying that I absolutely love music. There is some undefinable, ineffable quality that reaches into your heart and pulls its strings down to greater depths - whether these depths are fathoms of ecstacy, sorrow, or anything in between.

And now, for something peculiar (or not) - for a long time (but especially during my fresher and more vulnerable college years), my favorite songs were gentle, soothing, beautiful, delicate melodies; the kind that sounds like a flower wilting.

Or an exquisite porcelain doll slipping to the floor.

Or even a dark, giant, empty concert hall.


Then something clicked, and my feet fell into step with a different rhythm.

I don't know if I lost character with this change. I almost feel as if I had anti-matured, had numbed something, threw out the wilting flowers and used the vase as a champagne flute.

It has become enormously difficult to resuscitate those fragile feelings, and even when they should be there, they aren't. Once you lock something into the trunk of a broken limousine and toss the (piano) key, it can be hard to get it back.

Life and all its shenanigans

I live with no regrets.

Every stupid little moment, from jumping into a rusty cab with no working windows and a broken windshield in a "dangerous city" to sweating waterfalls in Chinese class (I was running, okay?) to winning 35x my money at a roulette table (for a grand total of $35 dollars), has been so incredibly beautiful and has helped shape me into the person I am today.

If I was given a choice to ride in a stretch limo, or wake up five minutes earlier, or add a few (dozen) zero's to the end of my bet, I don't think I would take it. I would just miss out on so much.

But of course, this is much easier said than done. Maybe it's a blessing we can't time travel.

An Unedited Excerpt

from my diary, because every single time somebody asks me what it is I write in those pages, I have no decent reply. So, in an attempt to embody the ineffable, I have posted here the last two paragraphs from my entry this morning, which is in itself both a reflection of the night prior and a worthy paradigm of my entries.

"Unfathomable discoveries, unspeakable sorcery, all are as real as the stone that tumbles by my feet, and life is never, ever, the same.

To each his own - whatever path he or she shall seek and follow - and though mine is distant - no, enormously distant - from having been constructed, I shall forge onwards, through the hills and valleys, the curves, and embrace whatever - or whoever - shall come my way. And in this gallant fashion I shall approach each day - and treat it as if it were not my last - but my first."

The night is always darkest just before the dawn, a friend reminded me once.

Well, dawn has broken free.