02 July 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on July 2nd, 2009 @ 09:26:44 pm, using 199 words, 5 views
I’ve been out of that classroom for over twelve hours now and I’m still smiling. Alice is her name. The reason for my extended smile, this day-long smile. Perfect little girl. Six years into her life journey and already capable of so much. That makes sense, I guess. The more experience we accumulate, the more layers we pile on to hide everything that has come to be recognized as quintessentially a child’s. Innocence. Openness. Impulsiveness. Generosity.
Alice sat in on my morning class, a proper young lady, looking around, drawing, mimicking my gestures and flashing disarming smiles at those repeating strangers who oddly and unquestioningly followed my lead. An hour or so into those ninety minutes of valiant effort towards a worthy objective, she quite simply stood up, smiled and came towards me with open arms. A singular, remarkable, reasonless hug… I was given.
She granted me the break I don’t allow myself to take. She brought persistent smiles to our lips, tears to our eyes and a collective ‘Awwwwwwww…’
She’s the stuff angels are made of.
30 June 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 30th, 2009 @ 09:41:56 am, using 41 words, 4 views
October 14th, 2008 - Tuesday
The Christ
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29 June 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 29th, 2009 @ 09:54:48 am, using 138 words, 6 views
The trouble with oceans is they don’t take up enough room in your life to match their majesty. The ocean that bathes the piece of land you’ve settled in is a supporting character at best in the minor play that is your life.
A move changes things, though. The moment you feel uprooted, everything that seemed permanent proves taken for granted.
The Pacific felt permanent to me for over seven years. A silent partner, a silent witness. And only at the very end of that era, did it occur to me to spend a cloudy November afternoon gazing at it.
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Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 28th, 2009 @ 02:39:39 pm, using 157 words, 9 views
We can all look.
Gaze.
Glance.
Glare.
Peek.
Peer.
Ogle.
Scan.
Squint.
We can all stare, convey different emotions while doing it, many at a time or pick one and give it room to take center stage, breathe out on its own. Accompanied by speech or spotlighted by silence. Clive Owen has always stared in a way that set him apart. I’ve always chalked it up to extra intensity but a few nights ago while watching The International I thought I spotted something, a small detail that just might be the secret to his stare, the ingredient that makes it unique and which has suddenly made me want to go back and watch each one of his films again. He doesn’t just stare defiantly, he doesn’t just linger confidently. He follows once eye contact is broken.
26 June 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 26th, 2009 @ 02:34:35 pm, using 922 words, 15 views
It seems there’s love behind everything. Love shaped to resemble anything you can think of. And all too often, love made out to be the prize. I distrust anything and everything that makes love out to be immaculate and a source of endless joy.
Damien Rice first came to my attention in a dark screening room as an unfamiliar voice delivering a haunting song, with lyrics that sounded personal and required a context to be understood. The context on that particular rainy afternoon was the inherent complexity of human entanglements.
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25 June 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 25th, 2009 @ 01:37:45 pm, using 71 words, 20 views
October 14th, 2008 - Tuesday
The Christ
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Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 25th, 2009 @ 08:33:54 am, using 253 words, 13 views
She enters the painted bedroom with a new book and announces the title.
‘No books now, Hana.’
She looks at him. He has, even now, she thinks, beautiful eyes. Everything occurs there, in that grey stare out of his darkness. There is a sense of numerous gazes that flicker onto her for a moment, then shift away like a lighthouse.
‘No more books. Just give me the Herodotus.’
She puts the thick, soiled book into his hands.
‘I have seen editions of The Histories with a sculpted portrait on the cover. Some statue found in a French museum. But I never imagine Herodotus this way. I see him more as one of those spare men of the desert who travel from oasis to oasis, trading legends as if it is the exchange of seeds, consuming everything without suspicion, piecing together a mirage. ‘This history of mine,’ Herodotus says, ‘has from the beginning sought out the supplementary to the main argument.’ What you find in him are cul-de-sacs within the sweep of history - how people betray each other for the sake of nations, how people fall in love… How old did you say you were?’
‘Twenty.’
‘I was much older when I fell in love.’
Hana pauses. ‘Who was she?’
But his eyes are away from her now.
(The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje)
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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