Something's wrong today.
Next to my Bernoulli curves, I looked up and saw the leaves and the branches and the prismic light that was falling through fingered meshes.
Something was wrong. The top of my head started to hurt, and I started to calculate how high an object had to be if it would take five minutes to fall. Five minutes later I would be on a bus, I reasoned. The wafer machine, I just noticed then, was actually off.
I stepped off the bus. Something itched. It was too strong to ignore, and I didn't pass it off as paranoia.
I'm still waiting for something to happen. Everything seems like an omen, the boy who fell down on rollerblades, the woman who dropped a coin into the gutter. Everything seems to be waiting for some convenient event, some radical 'happening' to come and to unite these events into a glorified television broadcast, with flashing captions and a deep-throated announcer's voice. "Little did these people know that their very own lives were being endangered. On the fateful day of July 16, 2003, mere minutes before this tragic event rocked the world..."
A month ago I was packing up, and in the back of one of my desk drawers, I found this candle. It was about four inches long, red with a white wick, and I noticed that it had writing in black, all over the side. It read 'September 11, 2001 -- remember'. It was my handwriting and it was my felt-tipped magic marker. It was from a school-wide candlelight ceremony on the night of "that fateful day".
I was about to toss the candle into the smoky-white trashbag when I saw the neglected flap of tape on the edge and stopped. The piece of tape was obscuring the bottom of the candle, no doubt put there to prevent the writing underneath from becoming smeared. I lifted it off. The whole thing read 'September 11, 2001 -- remember our hate'.
My foot almost stepped in a puddle, and I wobbled forward, narrowly missing a large obtuse elephant that zoomed past, honking and complaining. Something was still wrong.
Perhaps it was the sheets of pouring rain that weren't dripping on my nonexistent umbrella. Perhaps it was the current lack of English in my life, and the red book that said 'communism' clutched in my hand like a five-year old grabs his favorite Gameboy Advance cartridge like a dying man clutches at thirst to drink. Perhaps it was the obligation that I would have to spend three more hours moving myself in transit to get ready to move. Perhaps it was the fact that I still didn't care about this new revelationary message and still threw the candle away, along with a Emily Dickinson book and a 'European Kings' themed deck of cards that I used to practice my back palm with. Perhaps it was because today, I realized that I already left from the dot.
Maybe it's because I should be somewhere else than I already am. Maybe it's because my moleskine book isn't providing and/or provoking thought and instead is being ripped of precious sheets of lined paper to line the walls of my pin-up collection. I collect pictures of chairs, especially at night under yellow streetlamps, the flavor I like best. Apple Green lamps taste too sweet, and Raspberry Red-light district lamps taste too thick and gaudy.
Maybe it's because I'm still in this endless recursive loop of repetition. Triple redundancy. Like having two raid controllers.
Maybe it's because I've failed to care. Maybe it's because it's really funny how the US keeps bitching about North Korea as if its their problem, and how South Korea is wondering what the trigger-happy fuss is all about and chanting 'Stop the War' in candlelight protests and on black t-shirts. Maybe it's because I've almost forgotten why Bush bombed Iraq and that I need to remind myself why. Maybe it's because people are only now becoming all aglow about headlines and Bush being wrong, and how news trends are like fashion trends; they're becoming shorter and more revealing.
Maybe it's because I keep using 'maybe' to say things that I shouldn't. Maybe it's because I sing obladishly, and maybe it's because we get so tired about being excited than being exhausted.
Wordplay. Wordpun. I can't help but still think that something's wrong, but still.. whenever I look up at my grayish-blue sky, and whenever I see these fantastic ironic sunsets, I can't help but think that I'm still living. And that we're still loving and hitting and yelling and kissing and punching and killing and making and fucking and shitting and living.
This is what I live for, every single day.
This is now.