27 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 27th, 2008 @ 04:14:29 pm, using 116 words, 127 views
There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park
25 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 25th, 2008 @ 06:29:09 am, using 636 words, 162 views
This was inspired by an image found at http://www.popexperiment.com
and is meant to be the first in a series of posts inspired by photographs.
Photograph by Geoffroy Demarquet
—— ∫ ——
I know this girl. As ageless and timeless as she may seem. With her long-sleeved long dress, shy demeanor. She’s a girl given to looking askance, and tying up her hair. 
Although… there is strength in that silhouette. An inordinate amount of strength compressed into an outline of fragility. She’s Sally Field in Places in the Heart. She’s Toni Collette in Clockwatchers. She’s Jane Eyre in clothes hung slightly to the right in the closet of a timeline. 
From her own lifeline, the one in the palm of her hand, she hangs… on hold. She holds on to the shape she dreams of finding in the lump of clay her days are made of. The romance of moonlight was first written about for the likes of her. Because she needed it. (Once written about, things can’t help but seem more real. Even those things that aren’t. So moonlight was made beautiful… for her.) She stands between the tracks, waits in the tunnel - waits,
expects, hopes and gets little in return. The lump of clay doesn’t yield much. From her perspective - the semi darkness where she stands - that exit holds all the romance of a full moonlit night. Look! With the right intensity of focus, the right disregard for peripheral vision, that light at the end of the tunnel made gigantic by proximity can look like a convincing satellite. In fact, it does, doesn’t it? But she deceives herself - for it is day. Daylight, only steps away and not limited to a circle. It is all around. Ready to warm her up if only she would take those steps. And yet she chooses to wait… Perhaps wait for the ant-like silhouette over to the side who may or may not walk in her direction, who may or may not bump into her, who may or may not ask her to do that again, who may or may not take the initiative in forging a connection of some sort…
Everything is temporary. Everything begins and ends and sometimes begins again. When I look ahead I imagine infinite possible futures repeated like countless photo copies, thousand blank pages and in each one I see myself. Never hiding, never sitting silently and never just waiting, and waiting and watching the world go by.
(Clockwatchers)
We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
We may go to the moon, but that’s not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us.
Charles de Gaulle (1890 - 1970)
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.
We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin (1903 - 1977)
21 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 21st, 2008 @ 05:26:01 pm, using 439 words, 61 views
sen•tence [sen-tns]
–noun
1. Grammar. a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, etc.
—— ∫ ——
A sentence earned my gratitude. For a long time I thought only people could but sometimes it’s easier to bestow such a feeling on an arrangement of words instead.
A sentence came electronically one day, proceeded to intertwine itself with my story and that was it. Like a contract I was not present to sign.
A sentence. A simple chain of words woven together deep inside a cave off the map… by firelight… or candle light… in half light… which is essentially partial darkness. With partial knowledge or a partially clear view. Wistful, fanciful, erroneous, beautiful.
It’s quite the feeling to be put in writing, to be at the center of a memento crafted for you in a swirling daze of inspiration, pearls strung together around you by smoky hands that go to work, hovering over you in the slowness of an extended moment and eventually retreat back into their cave.
These words come to claim a life of their own. These are words that create a world you’d dive into, like a mysterious and inviting stretch of sea just off a cluster of rocks, where all that wondrous, secretively purposeful splashing goes on. These are words you wish you could live in - tucked away in the satin-lined inside pockets of a winter coat. How exciting would it be to take the form of a drop amidst the splashing of watery life? Or how lovely to shrink to pocket size and tuck yourself away against the softest of fabrics? That unpredictable? Or that safe?
A sentence taught me the craft of weaving love and hate. I had always felt them separately. I realize now they can cancel each other out. Every time I remember it fondly, I’m also reminded of being banished from the cave of its conception. Every time I try to hate it, it gets in its own way.
A sentence. Four paragraphs. Mainly one sentence.
It gets sporadically written in smoke above me whenever my head remembers to fall back and behold the sky. The smell of it makes the line between my lips stretch softly dimple to dimple.
Tsohbi(i)twtoaapbaomwstlotw
19 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 19th, 2008 @ 05:30:41 pm, using 19 words, 129 views
…courtesy of Maria Rita.
Have a listen and try to keep still… Quite the challenge!
15 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 15th, 2008 @ 05:54:45 pm, using 81 words, 127 views
This is something I haven’t done in a while: post thrice on the same day. But I couldn’t help it. These are some shots of the sky above me right after some equally crazy rain this afternoon. The kind of thing you just have to share…
Currently shattering window panes with a rendition of…
David Gray - Sail away/White Ladder
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 15th, 2008 @ 01:37:06 pm, using 1024 words, 186 views
The new movie P.S. I love you brought a name back to my consciousness. Names get left behind according to the times. Especially names that have no direct bearing on your day-to-day life, names attributed to people you only know by name. Their buoyancy is intermittent and when they float up to the surface after a hiatus, out of the big blue that lies beneath the surface… well, it’s a nice surprise. It releases a sense of nostalgia (almost like hormones) which, when taken in the right dose, can bring a smile to your face. :)
Richard LaGravenese is the name in question here.
Read more! »
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 15th, 2008 @ 10:46:30 am, using 234 words, 52 views
Looking is always supplemented, some would say even superseded, by knowing or wishing. We rarely rely on what is in front of our eyes, proceeding instead with quick glances overshadowed by images already imbibed. Take Alice’s journey to work: she knew it so well, she rarely noticed it was happening, she sometimes arrived at the office without recollection of having crossed half of London to get to her desk. All she needed was a quick bleary-eyed gaze at the basic shapes of the station platforms, and the rest would follow: she knew how many Underground stops she had to pass, which direction the escalators operated, and which tunnels the crowds avoided. She had no will to register the colour of the carriages, the shape of the clouds as they floated above the London skyline or the texture of the clothes around her. Though charming and no doubt poetic, these were luxuries in the overall design of her journey to work.
If Alice was a lazy Underground traveller, the poverty of her perception stemmed from a reliance on habit. She saw what she had grown used to seeing rather than what might have unfolded to an innocent gaze.
(The Romantic Movement)
12 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 12th, 2008 @ 02:08:25 pm, using 381 words, 66 views
I love pacing up and down, along and around those shelves, my head tilted to the right at an angle that will allow me to make out the titles and authors without inviting strangers to frown in quizzical judgment. I love waiting for whatever it is in me or those books that will force us together – will make the marriage of eyes and words, hands and pages, inevitable.
The day before yesterday it was Paul Auster’s turn to speak to me from behind those rows of book spines to whisper those magic words New York and Solitude and fashion those whispers into a sound that, though quiet, commands attention. There’s always something behind what we loosely call choice - or beneath it… or behind it. Somewhere there is chance. Chance, as in both luck and opportunity.
I reached for The New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude both by Paul Auster and removed them from their rightful place on that shelf and paraded around the bookstore with both on hand, laying them down every so often to leaf through other titles. I was hungry for words. Endless rows of them. All crowded, crazy and dripping sweat like in a rock concert. Milan Kundera, Philip K. Dick, Alain de Botton, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster again. The deriving question is always ‘Why?’ Why The New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude? Why not something else? An FAQ that can never be answered quickly enough.
It’s always been my experience that the unfolding of mysterious selection, from squinting, tilted glance to reaching to credit card swiping has a reason for being. There’s something needed before the need is revealed.
At the cash register, the sales guy smiled and said ‘The Invention of Solitude is really good’ or something to that effect.
‘Oh, yeah?’ I smiled back.
He nodded and kept smiling.
My skin tingles with the anticipation of discovery.
Sometimes we don’t pick the books we read - they pick us.
(The Hurricane)
11 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 11th, 2008 @ 03:15:13 pm, using 417 words, 62 views
This came to me just as I had decided to experiment with fiction during a bout of inscrutable, overwhelming sadness that has since abated, and left in its wake a clearer, less elaborate perspective.
Her voice is fenced and gated. There’s the question of wrong and right, which she understands – understands full well. There’s the question of past versus future. And then there’s the question mark residing right inside that fist-like muscle of hers. Wedged (pretending it’s nestled) between wrong and right, past and future. An inoperable residence. It could just as easily have been the question between north and south, back and forth, night and day. But it’s humanity in the present continuous she has to contend with. It is very much past versus future, right versus wrong. A spot center stage and no prior rehearsal. Dusk, at a standstill. Neither night nor day. Neither back nor forth. Neither north nor south. That place. That hand she’s been dealt. Limbo. Neither here nor there. A hand met with a sigh instead of another willing to shake it. Perverse question mark that curls itself up top to bottom like an eager-to-please student – that wretched, genderless combination of sexy and obsequious. That combination that gets under your skin and makes it crawl.
So many questions dressed up for the evening, made up and made over, only to be stood up by answers. As an immediate reaction there’s a closing of eyes and placing of forehead on cupped hand. The hand slightly curved to receive the forehead which in turn rests there indefinitely in appreciation.
Sigh.
Silence.
In the morning, the wind blows and the birds chirp under her net, this side of her door, within her fence and gate. Air and sound thankfully know no bounds. Birds, in their invariably hyper state, whether big or small, whether free or in cages. The wind either fueling their flight or constantly reminding them of what they’ve been robbed of. In the morning everything feels more solid. The cages, the doors, the gates, the fences and the hope that in being solid they’ll prove easier to open.
That fist-like muscle of hers and its wormy question mark, ready to explore – any fruit this morning is likely to bear.
Currently shattering window panes with a rendition of…
Damien Rice - Grey Room/9
03 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 3rd, 2008 @ 10:06:28 am, using 398 words, 138 views
Charlotte: Why do they switch the “R"s and the “L"s here?
Bob: Oh, for yuks. You know, just to mix it up. They have to amuse themselves. Cause we’re not makin’ ‘em laugh.
Charlotte: Let’s never come here again, cause it would never be as much fun.
Bob: Whatever you say. You’re the boss.
Charlotte: I’m stuck. Does it get easier?
Bob: No. Yes. It gets easier.
Charlotte: Oh, yeah? Look at you.
Bob: Thanks. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let… things upset you.
Charlotte: Yeah. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be. You know? I tried being a writer, but… I hate what I write. And I tried taking pictures, but they’re so mediocre, you know. Every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, like horses? You know? Take, uh, dumb pictures of your feet.
Bob: You’ll figure that out. I’m not worried about you. Keep writing.
Charlotte: But I’m so mean.
Bob: Mean’s okay.
Charlotte: Yeah? What about marriage? Does that get easier?
Bob: That’s hard. We used to have a lot of fun. Lydia would come with me when I made the movies, and we would laugh about it all. Now she doesn’t want to leave the kids, and… she doesn’t… need me to be there. The kids miss me, but they’re fine. It gets a whole lot more complicated when you have kids.
Charlotte: Yeah. It’s scary.
Bob: It’s the most terrifying day of your life the day the first one is born.
Charlotte: Yeah. Nobody ever tells you that.
Bob: Your life, as you know it, is gone. Never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk, and… and you wanna be with them. And they turn out to be the most… delightful people… you will ever meet in your life.
Charlotte: Hmm, that’s nice.
Bob: Where’d you grow up?
Charlotte: Um, I grew up in New York, and I moved to Los Angeles when John and I got married. But it’s so different there.
Bob: Yeah, I know.
Charlotte: John thinks I’m so snotty.
Bob: You’re not hopeless.
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.
Permanent Link
