Ouch

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.



After Love
by Sara Teasdale

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea—
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

The Story of Me

We all have our own stories to tell no matter how mundane a life we lead.

And we all want an audience - to share our moments of joy, jubilation, melancholy, sadness, and loneliness with. We all want someone to listen - to our crowning moments of success, to our achievements, to or struggles both within and without. We all want someone to share our views, perceive in the same manner, comprehend with the same thoughts.

We all want to be in touch; we all desire to be touched, to reach out to someone else both physically and emotionally. It is an innate instinct and desire that overpowers, often, any rational sense. We all need to be needed. And that yearning can be so powerful it oftentimes does not matter who that person is.

And at the end what we really want, as Kundera curtly points out, is just for someone to hold a mirror up to ourselves. Friends, companions, acquaintances exist for the sole purpose of reflecting to us what we would like to see and hear of ourselves.

It is the condition of alterity. Empathy, no matter how powerful, is never about the Other. It is always only about 'me'.

Inaction

It's at times like these where I hope my inactions speak louder than my actions.

But who would have read them?

It's not that I don't care.

But maybe I should have acted. Maybe I should have said something. Maybe I should have said everything would be alright.

It's not about the 'maybes' in life, is it?

Less than a week to make up for it.

I dare you to move ;

Ennui

SYLVIA PLATH

Ennui

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.

Quintessons

For anyone who watches the ever so popular Transformers series, you would know what I'm talking about.

For those who don't, I shall be kind enough to explain. Quintessons are creatures with 4 to 5 faces. Each face represents a different characteristic, comes across with a different tone, and is unique and different from the other faces. However, the most feared is the face of death, which appears when Quintessons pass sentence on criminals to send them to their demise in the Sharkticon pit.

But are these Quintessons all but a work of Science Fiction and animation?

Apparently not. We all are Quintessons in our own way. We were our different faces (they go by a more common name - facades) to blend in to our circumstances. We switch roles throughout the different acts and scenes in our little micronarrative known as the stage of life. We play the friend, then the backstabber. We play the villain, who saves the life of the hero in the end and redeems himself. We play the leader of the pack, and the follower of another. It does beg the question: what is real(ity)?

Indeed, we weave our lies of deceit and deception ever so well nowadays. We get so caught up in weaving the webs, hoping that they will catch the fragments of life which we want so bad to live out; to become perfect. Do we, at times, live the life we so loosely term "hypocritical"? Do we live lives that are not ours; that cannot be ours? They exist so often in our imagination, in our subconscious, and we blur the distinction between the Dreaming and the Real World.

I've been questioning myself lately. Have I succumbed to the life of duality and double standards? Indeed I wonder whether I would have done things differently if it were in the past. I've thought about it, and the answer is no. It wouldn't change. You've forced my hand. I gave you all the signs, the ominous writings on the wall. You didn't heed them. You've ventured forth obnoxiously, bravely (yet foolishly) incurring my wrath. Now it is my turn to strike back.