” I see only one woman here. One who is standing up.”
-Wit, Oathbringer
Change II
“He is wrong,” the Storm Father said. “You are not a hypocrite, son of honour.”
“I am,” Dalinar said softly. “But sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a person who is in the process of changing.”
The Storm Father rumbled. He didn’t like the idea of change.
Gifted-Public-Figure Has Died at Aged-age
“Gifted-Public-Figure has died at aged-age.”
Seldom do I swim in a sea of envy. I lie.
Envy waits patiently for me at my door each night and stands sentry till morning. It accompanies me – walking ahead on my route each day, morphing into fantastic shapes of alternate states of being. It pops out at each corner to say “I’m an option, if you’d heed it”. It draws in with play-fighting and truth-meandering; faux soul-searching.
Envy fears all things
Gnaws all things
Seethes through things
Corrupts good things – envy never mends.
Gifted-Public-Figure has died and I, I was inspired. And envious.
Not of their death, or even of their life. But of all those who are finding or have found their purpose, and are thriving in pursuit of the thing, even at 39. And then, I was envious of their mind.
But then that left no space to grow!
That left no space to ponder my own issues and grab my own weights.
It left no roads on which to be bare-back, worn down, weary, and soaking.
It left no reason for me to find a valley to fill with a sea of my pain and dive into, so I could swim to the other side and sing. All it did was encourage me to drown.
All I heard were songs at the corner with tempos of mourning, of cries to drop down, dig a hole and bury my soul. Then use all my powerful potential to water the seeds of waste and prune their poisonous vines where I had laid them.
All it showed me was waste when all I desire is grace.
Today hit’s different. Because I saw a light, just the one.
Then others quickly rose to affirm it. So I knew it was the light at the end of a tunnel and not a train hurtling towards me on the tracks.
Gifted-Public-Figure has died at aged-age. And I took my envy of perceived accomplishment and I put it on the road. I shaped and carved and filigreed till I was sure it would hold. Then I set it beside my other fears and worries, anxieties, doubts, and excuses.
I set it with no spaces between the cracks as my next stepping stone.
You Did Not Die, You Lived.
So. You were bested.
Was it not temporary? Will you not stand again?
Did you not get back up? Did you not survive? Did you not breathe again – deeply?
Don’t you just hiccup now at the thought?
At the time, in the very beginning, it seemed that all was lost.
It was not.
It held together as most things tend to do, when will is the glue piecing them through.
Save your victory lap, though. Get to the end and that was not the end. It was a part of the journey. That
Was not the beginning. You remember the beginning.
This was one stumble.
One out of a great many, parsed out over the journey.
Convoluted, hard,
Not an easy route.
Save that which you can, and remember to breathe, when you can.
Deeply.
Just so. And when you consider it later, I want you tempted to hiccup at the thought.
Close your eyes and savour it. But just for a moment.
I need your eyes open to continue down that road. And to know you will not die.
It will not kill you. Not till it is your time. And then, even then, you will breathe- deeply
As you go.
Doubt I
M: …You live in fear, my friend.
Y: I’m not sure I live in fear as much as uncertainty.
But I don’t believe those two things to be very different.
Fear feeds doubt, doubt feeds fear,
vicious cycle of imaginary people spitting in each other’s eyes.
Marriage I
“Humph! Don’t ‘spect all dat tuh keep up. He ain’t kissin’ yo’ mouf when he carry on over yuh lak dat. He’s kissin’ yo’ foot and ’tain’t in uh man tuh kiss foot long. Mouf kissin’ is on uh equal and dat’s natural but when dey got to bow down tuh love, dey soon straightens up.”
-Nanny, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”
A Reaction to Aziz Ansari
“I believe Aziz and ‘Grace’ are a product of a society and a culture that places consent in the realm of strictly ‘No’ means no, without a lot of focus on ‘Yes’ or silence not necessarily meaning consent. This same culture (whether partly rooted in patriarchy or evolutionary biology) pushes for men to mostly take the initiative in establishing communication and taking the lead in heterosexual interactions,while also defining seduction as a dynamic process.
With that being said, I am conflicted on absolutely placing the blame on Aziz regarding reading the non-verbal cues in that interaction. At some point she expresses that the speed at which things progressed initially made her unable to properly organise and articulate her thoughts to him. Following this, she performed oral sex on him at his request and then expressed her disinterest in having sex with him afterwards, to which he seemed to agree. Then she added, ‘Next time’. We live in a society where we police verbal communication and this is another reason I’m conflicted about this.
Fast forward to the point where they were around the couch and he requested she perform oral sex on him to which she agreed. I believe she felt some pressure- possibly stemming from her feeling bad about saying no partly because she went to his apartment, her inability to reconcile what she truly wanted, who she thought he was and what she was experiencing, and also possibly being too star struck to disagree. All of those reasons make me sympathize with her. However, I do not want to blame Aziz for not understanding this pressure due to the context involving romance.
I do believe there was some inappropriate behavior displayed by Aziz in continuously persuading her to have sex after she expressed her disinterest in that.
To wrap this up, I think the main issue here is ‘Yes’ and silence not necessarily meaning consent and an indication for us to keep dialoguing what consent truly means in sexual interactions.”
– C. Ilozue
Musings on One Really Good Friday
I have returned to France exactly two years to the day that I left it, as if I planned it to be more significant than it was. I didn’t. But it doesn’t diminish the feeling of homecoming that has been blossoming since I got on the plane from Istanbul to Lyon, when I started hearing snatches of conversations in French. It would then seem somewhat ironic that I had been dreading this trip up until that moment, not feeling my regular level of excitement to be on the move. I love to travel and will do it to within a penny of my pocket’s complete emptiness if given the chance. But France is home. It has been ever since the first day I stepped off the plane in Lyon in 2013 and some part of me will always be here. That is the problem with travelling. We take so much of the world we see with us but we also leave immense bits of our selves everywhere making it increasingly difficult to remain whole and marginally reducing the chance of ever sitting still with every new trip we take. Very soon, we stop travelling solely to discover ourselves and new places and people and things; eventually, we begin to do it because we are incomplete and are trying to find enough of ourselves in these new haunts to replace what we have left behind in the places that become forever beloved. It becomes as much of a give as it is a take. And the more we give, the more we need to be on the go so we can take some more. Travelling becomes the mechanism by which we breathe easiest, by which we can sleep the most comfortably. Languages become thinner and thinner barriers that we encounter as we imbibe as much of them on our voyages as we can. So it is that I find myself on a train at 22h 43 on a Good Friday in 2016 from Paris to Besançon with immense happiness in my heart, the likes of which I have not felt for about three months since my last trip.
On est bien là.
Thursday
She gets off the train and swiftly tucks her gloveless hands in her coat pockets; jamming her right thumb into the clumped up earphone cords connected to her phone that is, also, jammed in her pocket. She walks briskly to the traffic light and waits with head bowed for the light to favour her crossing. Five minutes after she has crossed the slushy mess of a road, she is letting herself into a warm lobby with a fob that is part of the tangled mess of that same right coat pocket. She briefly debates checking her mailbox but doesn’t do it. She, more pressingly, needs to pee. She takes the elevator up to her floor and walks – trots- to her door. She pauses for the briefest of beats outside her door and swings her tote off her shoulder. She lets it hang at her side as she opens the door – it will discourage the cat from dashing outside when she opens the door wide enough to walk in. He is sitting by the door as expected, he is shooed back by the bag he has not yet come to expect after six months of the same… Cats are not known to be exceptionally bright. She closes the door and does a pee-jig by it as she hangs up her coat. It has become more like a pee-shimmy by the time she kicks off her boots and walks sideways to the bathroom. She pees – relief. The cat winds his way around her legs. She wishes that he wouldn’t. He rubs himself on her tights. She tells him to go away. He seems to listen and settles just outside the door. She needs a shower and some dinner – in that order. The shower is warm and necessary. The cat sits just behind the shower curtain and jumps back when she is done and moves the curtains out of the way. She puts some music on and sashays as she lotions. She throws on something comfy then passes through a body spray mist she has created on her way out the bathroom door. She decides a quick stir fry will do and gets out a chopping board. The cat trails her to the kitchen, meowing now in hopes of a cat treat. She picks out a knife to chop some onions, the cat lays it’s upright tail lazily on her legs. She squats, plants her vegetable knife deep in the thorax of the cat in one swift motion, then walks back to the bathroom for another shower.
In-Threes 