04 July 2010
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on July 4th, 2010 @ 02:40:08 pm, using 714 words, 26 views
The discussion of proverbs and sayings on the Thursday before last (Book 10 can be all right, after all) got me thinking about the seemingly impossible magic trick that is seeing yourself. The paradox that is being at once the one who is familiar with every last detail, every last flaw, the keeper of every secret and the one who’ll never get to be outside looking in.
Knowledge requires being able to see from at least a few different angles. And that’s a limitation we simply cannot overcome when the subject is ourselves.
‘It’s difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame,’ as the proverb that set the thought in motion goes. If the frame is merely a situation, there’s always the hope that you might extricate yourself from it to gain objectivity. But if the frame is your very self, what then?
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26 June 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 26th, 2009 @ 02:34:35 pm, using 924 words, 204 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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22 June 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 22nd, 2009 @ 04:45:54 pm, using 1487 words, 1347 views
I had a flute I was forced to play when I was that age myself. Mine was a dark shade of brown instead of that ivory. The brown of my eyes away from sunlight and just a hint of that same ivory right where my name was carved on its surface. A measure of possessiveness in that carving, I can now see, a measure of selfishness, and also a touch of girlishness in that handwriting script. All minor differences in the context of the very dejavu-ish image of this boy and his flute. The one screaming difference was his absolute determination to do what had to be done in spite of the audience in attendance - the worst kind of audience, in fact. One that’s physically there but acts like it doesn’t want to be bothered, one that’s in its own bubble and seems to like it just fine that way. The kind of audience that is no audience at all but rather a bunch of gloomy-faced individuals sharing space for no higher purpose than to get to where they’re headed - simply immersed collectively in the common stretch of their routine and made temporarily lifeless by it.
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14 June 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on June 14th, 2009 @ 07:00:07 pm, using 323 words, 87 views
It arrives and departs as often as flights on a tarmac but with longer intervals. I’m living in one of those intervals - lying on my stomach just off that figurative runway, on the cool grass, knees bent, legs defiant of gravity and guided by choice, feet crossed and free, chin propped up by loose fists. Girlish and carefree. Waiting for the next landing to put me back in the moment that comes and goes. The feeling behind… inside… condensed within the moment that comes and goes. That feeling that is among the clouds one minute, touching the ground the next. That feeling that goes from hazy thought to hard fact, just like that and changes everything.
It used to be ‘I feel alone’ lurking gloomily inside that moment. And then it morphed into ‘I am alone in the world’ - the greater truth. It has stuffed my chest the way only potatoes or farofa chowed down greedily have managed to. It’s made breathing a struggle and thoughts ineluctable. And suddenly it became just a truth. A bearable truth. A quiet enough roommate. A palatable notion. A dream from which you wake or a life from which you doze off. A magic pair of glasses that bestow on you the super power of objective vision with which to view the trail left behind, that slideshow of memories that exacts a (tearful) price but hesitates to name a currency.
Most people seem to have an easier time putting the puzzle of their lives together, finding appropriate pieces for the appropriate holes and moving towards a recognizable image of some kind - be it a landscape or an abstract painting. I fall short of qualifying to join them. And especially short of succeeding in steering myself. I wait just off that figurative runway instead.
03 May 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on May 3rd, 2009 @ 01:39:51 pm, using 306 words, 100 views
Nearing the end of On Beauty I came upon these words again: YOU NEVER KNOW.
On this Sunday morning - the latest in a string of many which have, without explanation, laid claim to my reading habits, as I can only react with a listless going along.
Step One: Pick up the book from the shelf.
Step Two: Lie down.
Step Three: Move to Wellington.
No questions asked.
And right around the time I start missing a story (its characters and their conflicts) just leafing through the pages that are left and feeling on the tip of my fingers that the end is in fact, near.
(A clear downside to any artistic endeavor, active or passive: the fleeting aspect of it. Of creation, execution and dissemination. There is sadly, always an end to the ‘art’ tunnel which is often more interesting than anything outside. Outside, the world merely inhales and exhales the fumes of nine-to-five mistaken for oxygen.)
An idea came to me at this latest ‘YOU NEVER KNOW‘: to start an ongoing list of you never knows, this commonest of phrases that has become as meaningful to me as to retain a sense of importance regardless of what follows it. And here I go…
(Feel free to drop a line if you happen to chance upon one.)
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27 April 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on April 27th, 2009 @ 08:12:04 pm, using 203 words, 90 views
[Click on the thumbnail for a larger view]
The other night someone typed a sentence into an online window and hit enter. The line hit home.
‘I make up these conversations in my head…’ He may have said dialogues instead of conversations, I can’t remember now…
Different contexts around what he meant and what it meant to me but still home-hitting. Little does it matter where a line comes from if it finds this unlabeled room inside your head without any sort of guidance and settles there as though it had found its home.
I identified with those words immediately, realizing I’d done that myself on several occasions… made up conversations… split myself into two roles to tell a story the way it felt right to me… to practice… to rehearse the future, revisit the past wite-out on hand… off a stage and in front of a camera - making editing a possibility.
Most of what comes to me infused with nostalgia, melancholy or a longing for an intangible or unattainable something doesn’t really revolve around anything or anyone in particular.
I’ve come to realize most of it is between me and me.
Currently listening to…
Black Thumbnails - Kings of Leon
16 February 2009
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on February 16th, 2009 @ 10:04:42 pm, using 49 words, 35 views
You can revisit a place where you twisted your ankle and came tumbling down but you’ll watch your step in a way you haven’t before and wouldn’t elsewhere.
05 November 2008
Written by
Iris Watts Hirideyo (
)
Published on November 5th, 2008 @ 09:38:24 pm, using 165 words, 72 views
It sank in late last night just as the numbers were veering towards palpable certainty, an hour or so before Senator McCain’s concession speech. ‘This is huge,’ I thought very late in the game, after the long campaign I had kept a certain distance from, even as a news watcher. Change has indeed come to America and to the world. ‘A giant leap for mankind’ comes to mind just as The Sun’s headline reads. The distinct feeling of history being made, witnessed and shared. This was a historic election indeed, as the outcome itself (rather than the rolling of sleeves that follows any change in leadership) has brought about a renewal of hope. If the world and its people have evolved enough to appoint Barack Obama leader of the free world, we just might have great things in store.
Good Luck, Mr. President.
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