23 May 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on May 23rd, 2008 @ 05:27:08 pm, using 546 words, 106 views
One day, his mouth dissolved from a rigid line, a stiff lipless line into a blur, a blotted out line behind which words might’ve been shaped and plans traced. But those particular words had made their way to paper instead. Invisibly, soundlessly, mercurially attracted to ruled white sheets.
And from that paper everything emerged and unraveled - the whole gamut of a compressed story, from A to Z and the couple of letters there were in between - the convex/concave form of a smile easily bending to that of a capsized one. Capsized like a boat that was going nowhere. A paper boat like the ones you learn to make as a child by folding paper repeatedly in such a way. Paper boats are part of our collective legacy, I guess. Paper boats and paper hats. Like lullabies and later proverbs. Things we borrow and adopt but never really own.
She’d ask herself in the middle of the most mindless of chores, feeling ambushed by these unannounced thoughts: ‘What does it mean to have someone’s pictures in your possession?’ Pictures sent, not taken. Pictures you’re not in. Pictures of places in the world that are not yours to see. Pictures that don’t belong to you in any sense of the word. Mementos of someone’s youth. Precious… or so they should be. Misplaced and not looked for. Not missed. Glossy rectangles you should feel the impetus to run to during a fire. ‘What does that mean? Does it mean anything at all if they’re misplaced and forgotten? Or is it just paper?’ Tearable… terrible thought…
The most satisfying conclusion she ever managed to reach was: meaning is as relative and personal as a choice of profession, as taste… in clothes, food, color… Not meant to be shared. Merely shown. ‘Here. This is me. Does it ring a bell? Do I?’ And when bells ring… that’s when you know you’ve got something. That’s when you feel hands are meant to be held.
‘Words are not always there to be believed,’ it occurs to her. Not in the context of candid exchanges and not in the context of deception, either. Somewhere in between, somewhere in the realm of grey - which may turn out to be nothing more than decoration. Enhancement of a particular atmosphere, of something promising. A little well-intentioned push towards what you’d like a moment to become. Words don’t always spring from a truthful source. Words sometimes spring from an overly optimistic, naive place.
The blurriness that one day sets in serves a purpose. A parental sort of purpose. It tucks a chapter in. A chapter and the nomadic ever changing characters at the center of it. It half covers an episode. It half hides it, prepares it for nightfall - for the darkness of night to come in and do what it does best. Gently. For time is gentle. The longer the stretch of it you manage to walk along (patiently and acquiescently), the gentler it proves to be.
FLICKR photo by beccabrian
Currently shattering window panes with a rendition of…
Radiohead - There There/Hail to the Thief
04 May 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on May 4th, 2008 @ 06:22:37 pm, using 430 words, 105 views
“What does saudade mean to you?”
She didn’t understand what he was driving at. Couldn’t quite isolate his tone (which had come out uncharacteristically flat this time) much less put a convenient label on it. Maybe just ‘thoughtful’, it occurred to her for a fraction of a second. But conjectures were to be neglected today. Not worth her time. The prospect of certainty… that yes, was attractive. Concrete poured into a fist-shaped mold. The image of holding on fast. The image of solidity.
Still, it was an unfamiliar sound he was leaning on for expression. Yielding uncertainty. So she left the tone of her own reply as open to interpretation as possible. Returning an unexpected serve to the best of her ability and waiting - waiting out those long short seconds. She gave him an ‘I don’t know’ that could have led to three or four different returns. She gave him a choice of tennis court surfaces from which any given ball would bounce at differing angles. His pick would determine everything.
It could’ve led to a joke - the likeliest of possibilities, the kind that raises its hand faster than the rest - had that been his inclination. It could’ve led to his teaching her something as he was so fond of doing, being the bridge that linked her to knowledge. But neither of those was the case here. There was a wall of gravitas behind the question and a veil of it in front. She felt as though she were receiving a surprise visit from a distant relative she didn’t know existed. She experienced a subdued version of the reaction such an encounter would elicit.
A long pause followed her ‘I don’t know.’ A universe of possibilities behind it. Tropical forests with all their exotic fauna, rivers, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, wind gusts… all devoid of sound. A lifetime of natural phenomena behind those weary blue eyes.
Then, like a wave that arrives at the shore diminished but even and far-reaching…
‘To me, it means separation.’
Saudade (singular) or Saudades (plural) (pronounced [sawˈdade] in Galician, pronounced [sawˈdadɨ] in European Portuguese and [sawˈdadʒi] or [sawˈdadi] in Brazilian Portuguese) is a Galician and Portuguese word for a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.
29 April 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on April 29th, 2008 @ 08:40:45 pm, using 1161 words, 264 views
She’s the girl who’s always rushing. (It was said again the other day amidst heartfelt laughs.) She’s aware of it on days she musters enough attention to pay.
Rush…
Hurry – Dash
Hurry…
Rush – Dash
Dash…
Rush – Hurry
:D
There are the people who pay attention and those who don’t. There are days when attention is easy to control and others when it’s simply unruly like a mob of 5-year-old boys. And always infinity nestled in between.
Read more! »
25 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 25th, 2008 @ 06:29:09 am, using 636 words, 208 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)
11 January 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on January 11th, 2008 @ 03:15:13 pm, using 417 words, 114 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
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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