love, read, write

To let you all off from the non-fiction style writing that I exhibited in the previous post, here is a smidge of my prose poetry.

If you've been up to date with the YA world, you'll notice that the number of dystopian novels has been increasing. From The Hunger Games to the Divergent series, here and there we see popping up out of the bushes stories of post-civilization, where development has gone to the extent of destruction and where humans are forced to forge new rules and new societies out of the ashes we have burned ourselves.

Call it paranoia, call it a misjudgment, but I feel as if there are much more dystopian novels these days than there were, say, three decades ago. If you disagree with me, then hold your thought (or just go on and read something else). Let me ask you: assuming that I am right in my observation, what causes this? What makes so many modern authors feel the compelling desire to write novels about post-civilization settings with rebellious heroes?

Well, here's my take.

Today, we're immersed in what we affectionately call the Information age. The Technology Age. The Era of Major Development. The Age of Internet. Whatever it is, we know that one thing runs in the core of all of these names. It's technology.
In a world like today, it's hard to come by a first-world setting that doesn't use some sort of modern technology--starting from televisions, cell phones, even computers or tablets. Everywhere we go, we see technology, technology, technology. And what's more, these bits of technologies are evolving at an alarmingly fast rate. Year after year we see a new version of the iPhone--a commodity that was, just about a decade ago, a completely far-fetched dream. We see the development of scientific technology, biotechnology. It's not running on the forefront as visibly conspicuous representatives of our era, but many of you have likely heard of bioengineering, robotics, and other areas of that nature. How could people, say, fifty years ago, have known that today, we'd be testing the ability of monkeys to control artificial arms with sheer brainpower? They couldn't have.

And that, in my opinion, is the main engine behind the upsurge of dystopian novel publications. Because along with the goods of technology, there also come the bads. Yeah, it's great that I can find my nearest Shop Rite with my smartphone and get there without getting lost. Yeah, it's great that all of these inventions and machines are getting the job done with a hundred times more efficiency and speed than the average worker. But then comes the question of the humans themselves. What becomes of the low-skill jobs? Of the workers? What becomes of the things that technology replaces? What becomes of nature? What becomes of society, that once valued community and shared values? In another article, I read that our generation is the generation of narcissists. And in some ways, it's very true. It's easy to start something on your own. It's easier to play on your own. It's easier to feel less lonely on your own because you have the Internet--the gateway to practically the whole world now.

So there it is. With the good comes the bad and dystopian novels are the literary products of our innate questionings. What happens if it all goes too far? I'm sure hundreds of years ago, dystopian novels of their sort existed. But with technology zooming towards us at an alarmingly fast rate, the prospect of a doomed civilization seems very  much real to us. Are you forgetting about global warming? About alarmingly autonomous and human-like robotics? Much more people today are worried about the effects of development than, likely, people years and years ago. In fact, (and I'm sorry for all of these awfully ambiguous references, but I assure you that they are all reliable) I once saw a graph mapping the development of humanity over the history of the homo sapien, and what surprised me was that the curve of human development over the centuries was not linear nor parabolic (though I'd wonder why it would be parabolic)--it was exponential. The graph of our development, ideological and technological--get this--was exponential. This means that the sum of everything that happened before and through and after the Renaissance was, yes, a lot, but what's happening today is exponentially greater and faster than it has been for the history of our walking, self-aware, critically thinking species.

It only seems logical, therefore, that we are worrying about our futures more than we have been in the past centuries. And of course, what do the artists do? They portray it. They try to enlighten us. They try to play around with words that dance around topics that are close to us today. And of course, one of them is the eerily close idea of the destruction of civilization. It all seems too easy. Too much technology seems to lead to the disintegration of the values of what we have always held as human. And authors such as Suzanne Collins or Veronica Roth spin those ideas into easily readable words for the younger readers interested in popular culture. And it makes sense that way. Technology and destruction. Close enough, right?

Hum hum hum sings the bass of the computer. Tap goes the keyboards and shht goes the pipes and I don't hear insect legs or crying trees or singing mothers but I see nothing but emptiness, dark, black, abyss, while hum hum hum goes the bass of the computer. Whir goes the computer and type type type goes the keyboard and there is nothing but scatters, scatters of writing and papers and pencils and binders and books but look oh look! There are no grounds. There are no beginnings. There is just me, suspended in air, surrounded by words and ideas and expectations and hum hum hum sings the bass of the computer and I open my eyes and I'm back on the uncomfortable chair in the basement with a hum hum humming computer with work and duties, names and labels, life and society.

Hello there, fellow humans. I hope you all are good on this day. Whatever good means.

It's a dusty Tuesday morning, awkwardly early and dark, the time when nothing's awake but the few who work and the few whose hearts stay restless through the night. It's four o'clock.
So why am I awake?

That's beside the point.

Four o'clock is the best time to be alive, when the sliver between reality and sub-reality meet at a junction in which I can reside and write poetry.

Have I told you I've recently fallen in love with avant-garde style writing?

Well I have.

Here is a link to one of my poems (it can only be viewed on a separate page and you'll see why).

poem 1: once



I am continuing to write and survive, although these days my will for writing has decreased. It's not to say I don't like writing any more--I still love writing as much as I did last year, or the year before that--but I've just been in a very tired(?) state for quite a while so I guess that has influenced my will to do anything. This may actually be the first in-tact writing piece I've written in a few months...

But nevertheless!
I am alive!
And well!

And writing!
Which is exciting. I'm growing more and more fond of poetry now. Its poignant charm has really gotten to me.

I'm hoping to update with more writing soon!
If I write, that is.
Hopefully!

Wishing you all the best!
Happy writing.

Hello! Yesterday was the last day of the summer program that I went to. It was an amazing experience, meeting so many amazing writers and getting advice from them in workshop. It has definitely helped me improve in expressing myself more efficiently.
But enough with boring compliments to summer programs. Here are a few poems that I wrote in the train ride back home on the last day (mind you I was feeling very sad because I left a bunch of friends). (I wrote eighteen poems on the train ride.)




depart

acquaintances?
friends?
i-knew-them-once?
stranger?
it doesn't matter because we talked and we laughed and we listened to music
and then we left, dispersing to our homes like speckles of an exploding firework
each little sparkling freckle disappearing into wherever--i was never sure
i hope you each have a good life
maybe you don't care
i do, though
is that weird?



it's true

why do we have a different punctuation marks for questions
can we make a punctuation mark that we put at the end of lies
it would make things so much easier
i didn't eat your pie$
i really like this cake$
i love you$

It's that time of the year, guys! I'm here again, and I have so much to say.
I am currently attending a creative writing program at Columbia University (taking the train/subway there and back every day, talk about independence). To be quite honest, I had no idea what to expect and I was actually fearing disappointment rather than difficulty. If the class was phenomenally difficult and rigorous, I would have been rather pleased, because despite the difficulties, I would have been able to learn a lot. I was more scared, therefore, of some elementary level class on "how to write" or rather, "how to put your pencil on the paper." Thank god that I can say that Columbia's writing program is probably one of the best experiences in my writing 'career' so far. It really is.

Going to this program has definitely opened my eyes to the vastness of writing and art itself. I'm not trying to sound cliche or mushy or even advertise the program. I am being very candid right now when I say that I am extremely excited about this program. We workshop each other's work (and I must say, everybody's passion for writing is absolutely beautiful, to say the least) and sort of "conference" with each other to improve our work and debate on its topics. This is definitely helping me improve so much. So so so much, and I am so happy that I've applied and that I've been accepted into this program. It's just... an amazing experience. I know it sounds cheesy. Bear with me.

In the program, we aren't exposed to "normal" writing that I thought were the only ones in existence in the literary world. Poetry was flowery and maybe sometimes funny; prose was in paragraphs. That was as far as my knowledge went.
I had no idea about prose poetry, about Tao Lin (whose poems are amazing), about the different ways writers challenged genre distinctions--it was a whole new revolution in itself. Reading all of these bizzare genres and forms of writing opened my eyes up to a completely different side of literature. And I love it so much.

I realize that writing isn't about just words or form; it's about the meaning and the way you manipulate or break or piece back together that form and genre. I think I'm beginning to get a grasp of how vast and, just, open the world of literature is. I mean--who ever thought of writing a book of Wendys?
I'm serious. Reading so many surrealist writings and minimalist shorts has made me even more excited about writing. It has sparked a new area of interest. I'm a fan of modern art and minimalism, and I'm more than excited about the discovery of similar parallels in writing as well.

With that said, here is a short story I wrote for an assignment for class. (It's actually due tomorrow.)

Here goes.
(It's flash fiction.)

This time, I don't have a book that I can review (still reading What we Talk about when we Talk About Love by Raymond Carver), so I'll be writing about a general topic: notebooks.

Hello again! I just posted about Flowers for Algernon literally (and in this case literally actually makes sense) thirty seconds ago.

I thought I ought to post a few poems I wrote one day. I'm in a very minimalist mood these days (these days meaning the sort of 'days' that spans over a few months), and that might rub off on my poetry.

Also, as a warning, I write short stories more than I write poetry, and that might be evident in my atrocious attempt at poetrizing.
(It's a word. I stand to argue.)

So without further ado, here are some of my blind ramblings trying to sound poetic.


(I am not centering them because I hate centering poems. It's ugly.)


Ugh I've read over them and it just seems like I pressed enter in between extremely repetitive and completely in-cohesive run-on sentences. I apologize.


soft whispers

Hello all!

“Mary,” he says, “are you alright?”
She nods, but her hands are shaking and her voice hasn’t made a sound since a whispered “Good morning” six hours prior.
“Is there anything wrong? Do you need help?”
There’s something about her, he thinks, that makes him pity her. It’s not a certain family problem or an illness. But her general aura pleads for pity. Something about her keeps him worried all the time. He can’t quite put a finger on it.
She smiles nervously and shakes her head. “I need to go,” she says quietly. Her voice is shaking a little.
She almost trips on her high heels just as she leaves. She gets up and goes to the parking lot without looking back.
 
Her suitcase is sitting in the passenger seat. It is an old, tattered leather bag. She calls it a suitcase. Her parents carried suitcases. So does she.
She gets into the driver’s seat quietly and almost twists her ankle trying to get her feet into the car with her high heels. She doesn’t take them off. She doesn’t use the slippers given to her by him.
She drives precariously and carelessly, though her eyes are fixed on the road and she jumps a little at every green light, yellow light, red light. The suitcase is strapped onto the passenger seat with a seatbelt. There is nothing else in the car except for her suitcase and an air freshener vibrating from the hum of the car.
 
She drives into an abandoned neighborhood, an old one that nobody knows about. The dust is piling up on the streets from the lack of tires and footsteps. No wind lingers on the street. No soul haunts the houses. Some doors are ajar, a sentence of fear left unfinished.
Her throat is dry and her brows are damp with sweat. Her lipstick is thinned invisible from her incessant nervous licks. She parks in a garage on one of the houses on the street.
She leans over and unbuckles the seat belt of her suitcase beside her. Then she unbuckles hers. She picks up the suitcase and leaves the car. She closes it lightly. It doesn’t lock. She opens it again to slam it shut. It locks.
Her high heels are wobbling as she makes her way to the front of the house. The grass is uncut and the doorbell is broken. The door is closed.
She pulls out an old key from her breast pocket and inserts it into the door. It doesn’t fit. She flips it around and inserts it again. It fits. She turns it and it clicks. She turns the knob and pushes it open.
She holds in her cough as dust meets her face with a cold slap. She looks around at the disheveled items scattered on the floor, around the house. There is nobody home. There hasn’t been. Not for twenty years.
She doesn’t hesitate now. She enters the house and she goes left to the hallway and into the room. She doesn’t shake anymore. She doesn’t shiver. She doesn’t trip. She stands straight.
There are tears in her eyes. She speaks clearly for the first time that day.
“Oh, honey, honey, honey, I’m so sorry, honey. I know you’ve been waiting, honey. I know, I know. I said I would come, and I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
Sitting in two seats aligned beside each other are two young children. One is a girl. She is about six years old, with a ponytail held up by a pink hair tie. It has butterflies. She is wearing a sweater—the sweater her mother had bought for her at the mall fifteen years ago. It is old. It is dusty. It is browned. Beside the girl is a boy, about seven and a half years old, with long, shaggy hair a dull brown in the shade of the house. He is freckled with blue eyes but the eyes have no spark, no spunk, no youth. His shirt is a dull brown with a brand logo. It, too, was bought fifteen years ago.
Mary sets her suitcase down onto the floor and rushes to her two children. They do not move, they do not smile, they do not greet. She envelops each of them with hugs and kisses and tears. She pets their hair. She pulls them out at arm’s length. My, how you’ve grown. My, my. My dearies. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
They are looking at her suitcase now, and she remembers.
“Ah! Honeys, I brought you some bread. I sneaked some away from the refreshment table today, just for you two. I’m so sorry I haven’t come in so long, honeys. I really am.” She snaps open her leather bag—her suitcase—and pulls out two small pieces of bread, squished together into nearly balls from all of the other paperwork and weight. There is a bit of eraser shavings on one of them.
The two young children rush up to her and grab for the bread before she can say anything more. They shove the food into their mouths hungrily. They do not look up. They do not think. They lick their fingers and brush the crumbs on their lips into their mouths.
“I’m so sorry, honeys,” she says. Warm tears are on her face. “I’m so sorry.”
She looks at her two children again, and they are looking at her intently. Their eyes have no emotion. They say nothing but speak loud.
She rushes to her children again and hugs them both. “I’m so sorry, honeys I really am. I’m so sorry I’m sorry.”
She looks at her daughter. Tears are outlining her eyes as she pets her daughter’s hair. “You sweet sweet dearie. I know you still love me. You love me, right? You still do? You forgive me?”
She looks into her eyes. She does not reply.
Her son does the same. “My, my, my young boy. You’ve grown so much, honey. I know you missed me. I know you love me. Right? Honey, I love you. Please forgive me.”
He looks into her eyes. He does not reply.
She touches his face, softly. She smooths her thumb over his freckles. She puts her hand back to her side and she can feel dust on her fingers but she ignores it.
“Honeys, honeys, I’m so sorry, dearies. My dearies. I love you, I do. I want to be a better mother, I do. I’m so sorry, honeys. I have to go. I really am. Forgive me, alright, dearies? You think about it. I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe more bread. Or cookies.”
They are sitting exactly as they were when she entered. She looks back one more time and tears outline her eyes again. Then she leaves. She doesn’t look back.
She gets out of the house again. She is shaking. Her throat hurts and her fingers are black from something, something she doesn’t know. Her hands and coat and suitcase are covered in ash and dust. She ignores it, she ignores it all. She gets into her car. She drives away. She will come back the next day.

So I've finally gotten around to reading the highly obsessed-over, rabies-inducing, Okay-ing worshipped young-adult-of-a-novel called The Fault in our Stars, known amongst almost every teen in America. Well, to be honest, it was mostly due to the incessant unavailability of the book in our library, having been checked out and put on hold and put on hold and put on hold until the library just couldn't take so many consecutive holds and desperately wrote "on hold for an immeasurable amount of time."
(Seriously.)

To be honest, TFIOS (I'm lazy and I'm referring to it as TFIOS and there's nothing you can do about it) was a disappointing book. To say the worst, it was not that amazing a book. Granted, I had read it after reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (I love Huck by the way) and The Great Gatsby, so it is in stark contrast with some of the best American novels of, well, America. But nevertheless, it was simply a young adult novel that had its twist of love and adventure and sarcasm, a hint of John Green's existential thoughts sprinkled here and there.
(I could quite literally hear John Green in some of those passages. I am serious. John. Green. As Augustus or Hazel.)
Long story short it's a love story about Hazel Grace and Augustus, who are both cancer patients. Hazel has terminal cancer and Augustus has "won" the battle against his cancer, now left with an amputated leg and a spunky heart. He charms Hazel at one of the Cancer Support Meetings and the story spirals from there. I can't really say much after that because well I can't tell you why, either.

TFIOS was supposed to make my cry. It really was. For some reason I've been losing all emotion in any sort of moving movie or story or whatever it may be. I was watching (to be perfectly on topic) one of the sadder episodes of BBC's Sherlock (behold, ladies and gentlemen, I am following the fads and obsessions of modern society), and I was quite literally trying to squeeze tears out of my eyes. I really was. Same with TFIOS. (At this point you all must know some way or another that there is a devastatingly sad part at a certain part of the book.) But to be honest, I didn't even know when the devastatingly sad part was supposed to be. I just kind of knew when I got there that sometime around now I should be crying and well, I didn't cry. Not a single drop.

Nevertheless I liked certain parts of the book because I am going through some medical plights right now and the emotions Hazel went through (especially the part when she feared that she was a "grenade") was so relatable that I actually squeezed a few tears there.
(But not the devastatingly sad part.)
(Nope.)

TFIOS is, to be generous, a 4 out of 5, and to be honest, a 3.5 out of 5. It was just another young adult novel to me, and perhaps it was the fact that I didn't bawl endlessly at the Devastatingly Sad Part that it didn't really do much to me.
Nevertheless I need to eat dinner now and I hope this was a good enough review because I don't quite feel like writing an in depth one for a young adult novel (I'm sorry).

Happy reading!

There was a cigarette in between his teeth—his perfectly aligned, white teeth.

It was summer. A starched, bleached, bland summer day. The heat was swaying the trees in a lazy rhythm. The sweat dragged down my sagged face languidly, like it still wanted to linger at home, on the couch under the heavenly fan whirring out the now-coveted cool, oh—cool breeze.

I wasn’t too sure he was there—then again I wasn’t too sure I was there. I could feel the sun’s teeth were sinking into my skin, mocking me as it slowly let my sanity ooze out of the scorching teeth marks. I wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody woke me up just then to tell me I had fainted on the way to Quick Check.

He was standing across the street. Was it a mirage? But mirages were the sorts that you saw or hallucinated because you wanted it—you desperately needed it. I did not need a boy.

It was appalling, almost, the way he dared to have white teeth with that ugly cigarette. Actually, he seemed to be mocking me—that was it. He was mocking me. He knew I was thinking exactly what I was thinking, and he was flashing those tantalizingly white teeth at me. Maybe the white teeth were a mirage. God knows I need white teeth.

Another wave of heat hit me then; the wind sort of sluggishly slopped around my face. I almost fell over from the stagnant current.

But he seemed completely unaffected by the heat, that boy, the way he was listlessly grinning. Heck, he was wearing jeans—in this weather? It was the hand-me-down sort. Folded at the cuffs. Nobody folded at the cuffs. Definitely hand-me-down.

His grin sort of reminded me of those southern boys—the sort you would never want to meddle with. But he had an uncannily handsome look about him that I couldn’t quite place; was it his eyes, or his nose, or his eyebrows? He wasn’t quite muscular or skinny or fat. He was avoiding any sort of conventional description, that sly boy.

The way he was grinning, though—it gave me no view into his personality. What was he? An arrogant rich kid? Well—definitely not rich. But what? I mean, each word was rolling through my head like some lethargic turtle on two hours of sleep. Words were not feeling invited to my brain that day.

He was looking at me, though; his eyes were definitely fixed upon me. What color were his eyes? Were they blue? Green? Brown? Hazel? Oh, I had a thing for hazel eyes—but I needed no boys. No boys.

What was it about him? Why did it strike me as oddly handsome, the way his folded-cuff hand-me-down jeans were drooping over his tennis sneakers stained brown, the way his hoodie said something that I obviously couldn’t read because of the sun and the scorching heat? (I hoped it wasn’t anything explicit; that would certainly lose my interest.)

(But I wasn’t interested in boys. No, I was not.)

I gave the crosswalk button a few more impatient punches before slowly turning to face the other side of the street.

A breeze reluctantly made its way up the scooped hill of the sizzling town, as if it were some sort of stroke of God. A breeze—warm, but at least not hot. It entered my left ear, whispering ice-cream before leaving through my right. Then it hit me.

By God, I realized, what a fool I am!

He was mocking me!

He knew I was not in need of any boys. So he had decided to be there.

Jesus Christ—that was it. He was mocking me. He knew I was avoiding any sort of emotional attachment.

Ice cream cravings perching its very heart at the freezer aisle of Quick Check soon dissolved away into the pollen decorating the next breeze. I needed not to cross this street. It was for another day. Ice cream cravings, I apologized, you’ll have to wait for later.

Just then the crosswalk sign turned the cordial white of a walking man.

So I walked right back home, leaving the cardboard cutout wavering in the breeze.