Jump Then Fall

I like the way you sound in the morning
We're on the phone and without a warning
I realise your laugh is the best sound I have ever heard

It's hard to imagine, for those who haven't been there, these feelings and how they affect every single little detail of your life.

I am infatuated, and my heart pounds, and I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. I fumble for things to say when I'm around him, and when I'm not-- the words keep rushing out. Everyone around me is tired of hearing about him--

But it's not really him I'm talking about. It's me- my soft, fluffy feelings, my hurt, my thoughts and tiny, trembly hopes- all spilt out of my mouth and into the air, making vague cottony shapes that clog up everyone's ear-holes(not him again, they groan) and they don't realise it's the most selfish I've been in forever(or at least, since the last one).

I like the way I can't keep my focus
I watch you talk but you didn't notice
I hear the words but all I can think is
We should be together

Infatuation is a selfish interaction. You always think you're giving more than you get, but what you offer isn't really worth much, is it? Sure, you run around doing favours, but for the more selfish among us--yours truly included--they're followed by this vague resentment that would never occur if you really, genuinely wanted to help. It puts a bite into every word and every gesture, lends a new bitterness to every memory.

Cause every time you smile, I smile
And every time you shine, I'll shine for you

Don't put yourself out for her if she doesn't and/or won't feel the same, I scold. In the back of my mind, a sinking feeling tells me that I'd do the same in his shoes. So I give him a wry smile, pat him gently on the back, and agree that it's a shitty feeling.

Woah, I'm feeling you baby
Don't be afraid to jump then fall
Jump then fall into me
Be there, I'm never gonna leave you
Say that you wanna be with me too
Cause Imma stay through it all so jump then fall

The Listener

I am an expert at faking smiles. 

It’s what I’ve always done, always thinking about other people and other people’s feelings and their problems. Why bother them with whatever useless emotion I’m feeling?

He was the only one I never tried to hide with. He listened to me: not to other people, no, they bored him. But I was this hurt person and I was his person. It felt good to be heard. I could talk and talk and not worry about judgement or boredom. Of course, I listened in return. But that’s what I do. 

I’m a listener.

I listened to him all the way through his friendship with her, the ups and downs, the fights and the birthday surprises. And I listened as he told me we were too different, that he couldn’t hurt me or hide it from me anymore. I listened all the way to the door, and beyond.

I listened when he told me he’d moved on, when my traitorous heart was still hoping against hope that things would go back to the way they were. I listened when he had fights with his new girlfriend and he needed to vent, the ache in my heart not fading but growing sharper, it seemed, with time.

And I began faking smiles again.

Friendship and Its Many Benefits

I am alone. It is cold and it is dark and this is not the first time I've found myself here.

I've grown complacent and comfortable, and the dark side of life has come and shaken me, to wring me dry and toss me out again.

I sit and watch people pass by. They live their lives the same way I do, and yet they seem to have something protecting them; some sort of insulating layer between them and the hurt of the world. There are moments: both emerald green and sapphire blue. I wish I could be that way. I wonder if I could ever be that way.

People are always disappointing you. Somehow, at some stage of a relationship, you give away some fragile part of you, and it never comes back in one piece. So why do I still try? Every time, I hope it'll be different, but it's never worked out like that for me.

Maybe it's that I'm always disappointing myself.

Where was I? Oh, yes.

I am still alone. I wait for his call, knowing it won't come, knowing that which once existed is lost forever. But I wait in the dark, hoping and praying that it's not too late.

------

Fiction, sliiiightly dark. 206 words. NOT from life, so if you--yes, you--think it's about you, eff off. :P

Katze

P.S. Maybe inspired a little by all the poetry we're doing in Reading Lit. All the metaphors and symbolism.

The Doctor: A Bedtime Story

It's been a while. Something came up. A lot of somethings. Time for an inane bedtime story!

Once upon a time, there was a boy who wanted to be a doctor. He had heard it involved cutting people up and wanted in on the fun.

He started with flies and bugs. (They all do.)

He got bored soon enough, seeing the innards scattered all over the place. After all, they weren't the slightest bit like human ones. Or so his 7th grade Biology class informed him. Insects and Mammals. Different Divisions, Phyla, whatever.

Cats went missing. Strays and not-so-strays. After all, when Ginger took it into her head to disappear for a while, she'd come back in her own time. No point hurrying her.

But soon he had seen all he could see there, too. There must be something else.

There was the one dog. But dogs aren't like cats: they come when they're called, and when they don't, there are search parties and finding the remains, and there are sobby kids and blame. Always the blame.

But it was when little Risa went missing that people finally thought there was something wrong. By then, of course, he was well on his way out of this little town and to the big city; with hundreds of bodies just waiting to be opened up for his satisfaction.

The police investigated and held press conferences: there were demonstrations and pamphlets telling everyone to be careful. They reached him, too, of course. And he really was careful, just like they said.

It ended when he cut himself up, just to see if he was the same as them inside. Just to see.

The End. Now go to sleep, you.

Hope

It's probably fitting for me to follow up a blog post on how I hate myself and my writing, my life etc. etc. with a blog post on hope.

I'm feeling hopeful.

I wrote around 4,000 words yesterday. They were doubtless not some of my best words, and I know I'll have to rewrite and rewrite until I go insane, but somehow, I'm more hopeful about this story now. I don't know if it'll be any good, or even if I'll want to rewrite it after I finish the first draft: but something in me says:

COMPLETE IT. One way or the other, finish it, and we'll see what happens in the end. Hopefully something good will come out of it.

I really, really believe this, and that's all I have to hold on to.

My goal for today: 13,295 words. :D That is a lot, considering my word count is around 6,000 at the time of writing this blog post. But I'm going to make it interesting somehow. And I will COMPLETE IT.

Katze

How to Read a Book

Let's see.

I used to think I had no clue, and yet, as I trawl the internet for the 'right' way, I realise no one else does, either. In fact, most people have even less of a clue than I do.

At least, after years and years of reading, I've figured out how to pick books I might want to read, and then actually get down to reading them. I don't need a blog somewhere on the shores of the vast ocean that is the web telling me to find a nice, quiet place. I can read pretty much anywhere, but certain times and weathers inspire me more than others. Like late at night, with nothing else to do, or during the rains, when the weather is special and amazing and cool. I know what kind of books I can read(well-written ones) and which ones I shouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.(It's taken me precious reading time and money to identify those, anyway)

But the real question is, how does one get the most out of a really good book? I rarely ever think about what I'm reading while I'm reading it, and I'm sure this isn't correct. One should, in theory, immerse oneself, and yet be able to talk about it later.

Right?

I tried to read Tolstoy, experimentally, while thinking about and appreciating word usage, characterization and the like. And found myself here, in the present, instead of turn-of-the-century Russia, going to war against Napoleon Bonaparte. More importantly, Andrushka, my longtime fictional crush, stopped being a real person and became just another character fleshed out on paper. I felt like crying.

*sniff*

I give up. Now, unless someone makes me read a book in that way again, I never will. It shatters the soul, really. And ruins all the books that made my life worth living.

Then, I tried to read The Lord of the Flies while thinking about what was happening every chapter or so. I was safe from disconnection, since I thought about everyone, Piggy and Ralph and Jack, as real people, stuck on an island somewhere. But here, while I loathed Piggy initially, I started becoming as scared of the other boys as he was, eventually. And what happened in the end created an emotion in me, a deep root of self-hatred for a race that could become like this in practically no time at all, with no self-control and no ultimate feeling of responsibility when they are away from the eyes of civilization. And that terrified me, too.

So I stick, for the time being, to reading books like I always have, dissolving into nothingness for a while, and coming back with only the vague impression that I have witnessed, not been a part of, something great.

It's safer that way.

Katze

Fic # 3:Secret

For Archu, with no dialogue.(Oh, however will I make the characters and setting believable to my readers??)

Title: Secret
Word count: 506
Genre: No clue :P

****

This big secret. I take it with me wherever I go, and it weighs on my mind.

Life's suddenly become too exciting. All the frustrated wishes that things would change, become better, wilder, have vanished, and all I want right now is for things to go back to normal. To be a nobody, with nothing and no one's attention.

But I should start at the beginning. I have a friend; don't ask me who it is, don't think it's about you, or you, or you in the back there. So this friend of mine, she begins to go slightly crazy. Nothing anyone will notice, of course, but ever so slightly. Things which are unimportant happen, and she's freaked out by them. I, being a half-decent friend, as I like to believe I am, am concerned, then worried. I try to speak to her, and she asks me to leave it alone.

I don't listen. I don't want to.

So then I do what everyone else does, which is poke my nose into her business. I sneakily read her texts, watch her ever so carefully as she walks to and from her apartment, and just generally do things that eventually warrant a restraining order.

I find?

...Nothing, of course. Everything is completely normal. And then(I'm assuming) she finds out about me, because she freaks out even more one evening, as we're sitting in her kitchen and talking about life. So I ask her point-blank, what it is she is so terrified of.

And she won't tell me, but I ask again and again, and it's too late, and we're too high on lack of sleep, and she tells me things. Things I don't want to hear, things I've never wanted to listen to. But now that I have, can I simply go back to the way things were?

The short answer is no.

I want to help, though. I'm unsure about a lot of things, but I know for certain that I want to help her. This burden that she's carried, it seems to have eased simply by the telling, and I wonder if it would ease even more if I try to actively help.

So I try. I follow her around more, and she becomes tired of telling me to go away, go home and leave her to her task. I am always with her, on her side, sometimes the only one. I tell her she is important(not only to the world but to me), and as the weeks pass I realize this has become the truth. She has become irreplaceable and precious and important.

And when she falls, my important, precious, irreplaceable person, I go slightly crazy. Ever so slightly, nothing anyone will notice.

This is the burden I carry, the secret I have shared with no one but her. Her life's work is now mine and I will(must) do anything to achieve its completion. I wish none of this had happened, I wish I hadn't been so curious and so thoughtless, enough to throw my life away.

What choice did I have, though?

It was love.

****

I'm still not sure what that was.

Katze

Deadhouse Gates

...Because some book titles are just too cool to believe.

Life is cruel, they say. That's why George R.R. Martin, while writing Game of Thrones, maimed an 8-year-old within the first few chapters.

Of course I hated it when that happened, because I like life to be sunny and happy and joyful and all that jazz. Not that it is, ever. But it's nice to pretend--and even believe--that it is. And that is the kind of feeling I get from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. There's a lot of sadness and bitterness in it, and a lot of death. But at the end, I kind of feel like the people in the story changed lives, their own or those of others, in some way. Mostly for the better. And, possibly, that's all one could ever want in life.

Basically I liked Coltaine. I really liked him. He had a useful way of dealing with people--ignore their whining and then enforce martial law to make sure they toe the line. Yup, something special, all right. Highlight for spoilers: And he's dead, nothing can change that, really. But his sacrifice wasn't in vain, and that's what matters in the end. 

End spoiler. Something I learnt from TV tropes and idioms, a rather useful if slightly flame-y site.

Go on: Linky, linky

Hum. Anyway, Coltaine. Here's the most romanticised version of him I've seen so far:

.

.

And here is a book cover with him on it:

Yeah. Sliight difference. As a matter of fact, that cover is more art than cover, almost. It depicts the feeling so well, you feel like crying when you see it. (*sniff* No, that is not a tear there in my eye.) Beautiful, wonderful special edition. Now, why can't more people gift me stuff like this?? People in my life, take heed.

Signing off, and wondering why life, while alright in the theoretical, is such a pain to actually live.

Katze.

P.S. Is a bit mortified, because just realised have been pronouncing it wrong myself, and have recently corrected someone else's(correct) pronunciation. Sorry. >.<

Bibliophilia

Hi,

It's been so long since I last wrote a blog post that I've almost forgotten how.

This one is, as ever, for myself.

I've been reading like a maniac, and I've come to several conclusions:

1. I don't like Raymond E. Feist, though his name is rather ...inspiring. Just the right amount of mysteriousness with the 'E' and a hint of magic with the last name. But I was un-awed by his first book, Magician, in spite of which I ended up reading the whole thing(Thank you, Mr. Feist, for giving me Arutha conDoin, though. He was the first--and possibly only--character I really, really loved in Magician.) Silverthorn, his second offering, hurt my brain, and not in the o-m-g-this-is-fantastic kind of way. I left it halfway. I-I!  had to leave a book halfway. Imagine my pain.(Though I'm yet to complete A Tale of Two Cities, I'm afraid.)

2. I am still in love with Terry Pratchett, and the girl who is Aching all over. ;) I recently came across this amazing book:

And, once again, I am in love. It's a fantastic book, going far beyond the usual funny, witty fare, with loveable characters and strange, yet oddly familiar devices and settings. No, this one has got an amazing sort-of whodunit and whathehellisgoingon vibe that really just kills it, you know, no disrespect to the surfer dudes or whoever that I've stolen that phrase from. I can't wait to read the sequel, Making Money.

-No really. Let me leave this blog post to go read it right this instant.-

3. I also am awed and amazed by the master storyteller who is Neil Gaiman. Respect. Nothing else can be said. I read Coraline recently, and I wonder how something about a child's seemingly perfectly harmless imaginary adventures could be made to be so creepy. But I think that might be it: what is harmless for a child, in its dreams, can inspire much more creeping-up-your-spine terror than anything an adult can ever come up with. Coraline is one of the few books whose movie I've seen before I read the book, but I loved the movie(Henry Selick classic that it is :D) and so I was enthusiastic about picking up the book.

This is the scariest thing. Ever:

And now I really think I should finish up this post, since I have places to be and things to do, and one absent team member, and one pissed-off one. Cheerio!

Picking Up the Pen

So I've only ever written using a pen and paper when I was around 13-ish, just silly little stories featuring my friends to make them laugh. Actually, no. There was that one comic strip(recurring) about the adventures of the can of tuna.(With wings and a halo)

In Junior college, I'd while away the lecture time writing rubbish fake-articles about little glass prisms or bottles of hydrochloric acid taking over the world, sprouting little legs and destroying the college building, giving me much-needed vacation time. But recently, after trying so hard to understand what I need to be a 'grown-up' writer, I've completely given that up. And of course, even the fiction I used to write and put up somewhere on the net was all written in word documents.

Now, when I try to start something new, I open Bean and just start typing. I love the freedom, but I wonder if maybe a pen and paper would work better for me. I've tried, writing one part of a short story in a Classmate notebook on a rainy day before giving up. And nothing annoys me more than not being able to come up with words. Nothing. Whatever kind of screen it's on, whatever medium it's going to be read on, I hate not being able to keep the words flowing. And it almost never happens to me. But somehow, when I try and write on a book, I stop. I cross out. I over write. And it just... comes down to crap.

Also, looking at my rubbishy scrawl, maybe I feel like I can't take myself seriously. Maybe that's it.

 How can someone whose writing looks like this ever write anything of any value?

Maybe it's never going to work out. But I never know until I try, right?

Trying hard,

K

Weekly Fic #2: Supply and Demand

Title: Supply and Demand

Genre: YA

Word count: 447 words.


"Are you guys sure?"
My friends, girls to the point of idiocy, giggle and give me a victory sign each.
"Don't worry, someone's already told him about you-just go over there."
"Okay, okay."
I'm incredibly nervous. I've never done anything like this before, and if it weren't for some guys we overheard talking in class, I might never have thought about it.
The delinquent--I've always just assumed he was a delinquent--is leaning against a handy set of rails. I wonder if he's just trying to be picturesque--
"What?"
"Huh?"
"What? Why are you over here?"
I give him a weak smile. Damn my inability to converse properly with strangers.
"I'm--"
"No names. I know who you are and what you want."
"So," My voice drops an octave. "Can you supply me with... what I want?"
"Can I?" He mocks. "Do you want it or not?"
I nod. Then I nod some more, just to make sure he gets the point. He gets tired of it after a while.
"Hand it over."
I duly hand the pendrive over to him.
"When will I get it back?"
"When I'm ready."
"So... tomorrow?"
He just gives me the evil eye.
"Day after? Sunday?"
"When I'm ready."
"-because I'm not in campus on Sundays," I rush to reassure him.
"Monday morning. Fine?"
Before I can splutter my 'yes's or 'thanks', he's slinking down the stairwell -just like a real delinquent.

---------

It's bright and early Monday morning, when I walk past the same spot three times. Each time, I notice he isn't there. I'm beginning to worry for my pendrive. It's not like I had stuff on there, because, as an obsessive-compulsive password setter, I backed up and deleted all the data before giving it to an unknown hoodlum. But still.
Finally, in the break between the last two classes of the morning, I see him.
I take in a breath. His hand is in a cast.
"Um..."
"Here." He tosses the pendrive in my direction. I flail a bit before catching it.
"It's got-"
"Yeah, yeah," he interrupts. "Just give me the payment."
Looking surreptitiously from left to right, I put a hand in my bag. Rummaging around, I give him a faint smile. "It was here this morning. My bag's like a sack, just gobbles everything up and- ow!" I pull out my hand and examine my finger--it's bleeding from the pin of the Rolling Stones badge I'd dumped in there.
His patience is probably running out. I do not want a delinquent mad at me.
"Ah! There you are, paid in full."
He grabs the chocolate bars from my hand and does the slinky thing with the stairs.

---------

Note: This is probably a part of a short story I just decided to write... like just. Like ten seconds ago. I'm not sure where this is going to lead, but I've a start and a finish. It should work out.(probably)

Weekly Fic #1: Giving up on a dream

Title: Giving Up on a Dream

Genre: Slice of life

Word count: 552

The guitar's been lying in the corner of my room for a while now. I pause and try to recall just how long a 'a while' is, and wince. It's been longer than I thought. I want to go right over there and start making music, but I can't. I have somewhere to be.

It's been like this for a long time now, me putting everything else in front of my music. I can still remember the times when I would stay up all night, with my parents safely asleep in their room, trying to come up with a tune to capture what I was feeling. It didn't seem to matter if the next day was a schooldays, ir even if the day held more than that, like an exam or a competition, I felt like I just had to play, and that's all there was to it. It's strange, that I've always been called lazy or doesn't apply herself in school, but when it came to teaching myself the guitar, learning to compose, crafting lyrics and reading poems, I've never had to force the concentration. It just came naturally. That's why I had those fights, when all the adults around me told me that a musical career wasn't worth it, wasn't, in fact, even possible for me. And that's all I wanted to do.

"Play for us."

It's so common now, something like a usual refrain, that I only blush and stutter and wave it aside. I haven't played for anyone. Never. Sometimes, I like to let people hear me play, when I'm already practising. Most people don't understand, though. How do I expect to be a musician if I don't allow anyone to hear my music? I don't tell them the truth, that I've been putting up my music on MySpace forever, ever since I listened to the other amateurs, back when I was a kid. And I didn't get much recognition. A few fans, here and there, who asked me, almost immediately, to fan them back. And the truth is, their music sucked. So yeah, I never thought I was anything special back then, and I was right. Listening to it now makes me laugh. The crap I put up. Of course, there's still some of that in my music today.

"Are you free today?"

Yup, not a thing to do. Was planning to just compose and weed out most of the crap today, but I can always postpone that, to do something totally fascinating, like walk along the lake, chatting, with you. (Do I even know you?)

The guitar's been lying in the corner of my room for a while now. I pause and try to recall just how long a 'a while' is, and wince. It's been longer than I thought. I want to go right over there and start making music, but I can't. I don't have anywhere to be, or anything to do. But I still ignore it and walk out of the room.

Now the bitter truth hits me, that it has nothing to do with my other commitments, that the fact is, I can't face my guitar anymore. Nothing comes out, or if it does, it's stilted and unsure. I'm unsure.

Do I give up on what was, after all, a lifelong dream?