To Trim Perceptions

        What kind of a week it was, what kind of a day it was.         What kind of a life it is!          #          Fade out.                    The pale night hugged me with its cold wet arms.            A million arms.  One pedestrian.          I tried to pronounce my sadness, but there wasn’t any.                    It was a simple, silent night, in which walked a restless shape.          They were all asleep.   I watched the last window turned dark and away.   But I wasn’t alone.  Shadows walked pass me once in awhile.          They were lost in the conversation of night also, but they were determined, unlike me.          I was a vagrant. Those who wanted to embrace me I had left; those I wanted to grasp I couldn’t find. /鹿鳴會館          #          They're supposed to be roses; it's supposed to be a heart.          Supposed to. What an excruciating and misleading concept.          It’d kidnapped me, before I can even remember, and kept me

Kate, late morning.         No, not just pestilence; the nature of all lives is repeat.          #          That night we rode together on road 11, letting the rice fields that straddled the road passed us by; hovering overhead was indistinguishable fields and ocean and sky.  A million darkness, I suddenly felt sad.          Involuntary sadness.  It may had been something in the wind, or the invisible cottages between the waves of the rice fields.          I was so alone.          Alone is not strong.          It’s not clean, nor independent.          No, alone is sad.  Pure and cool tears, that sort of sad.          #          “To make a simple allegory,” he said, “in darkness, those who have faith can follow the torch that leads the way.”          Faith is not incompatible with Science, he said.         “We can debate over everything else in religion, but faith,” he pointed to his heart, “it has to be there .”          We lock the door and close our hearts because

        “Life is a performance.”          She rose out of her chair, the fluffy pillows, and walked out of the wall.          It’s a world of tears.  It’s moist, with all the lost chances.          Her heart was a crystal white sliding door.  Failing, an imploding lotus.  Dew of the aching heavens.          She could hear the air, cracking, under the presence of the world beyond.          She could feel the tremor of the gods.  Bloody, strumming hearts, caged in the icy river.          The tenor of their cry, it shattered the mountains.           Tea leaves dropped from the sky.          The perfume of life permeated; it lingered, just above ground.          The wind slithered, it bled the grass.          She stepped, barefoot into the weed.          Far and further, there is a shower of hurt, hovering over a corner of the moor.          Don’t, don’t give in.  The voice was sonorous.          She wept into the ground.  The lofty cry bled it dry.   Strangled to dust

  - the lady bug I met today.         Fall of 2009, I caught the flu. Fever started running high, and I couldn’t get out of bed. The air above my body was a painful swirl. Everywhere, hurts.         Cold medicine didn’t help. I went to the hospital; they prescribed me fever reducers. I could barely walk. The medicine didn’t make much difference. My temperature kept on soaring, night after day.  I wanted to cry; I didn’t know why.         I couldn’t understand why. “What kind of flu is this,” I kept asking, “why wouldn’t it stop hurting, like usual flu?”         It turned out to be H1N1, but misdiagnosed at first.         When the whole room sits heavily on your chest.         It can’t possibly get worse, you think.         It can’t possibly last forever, you think.

        Meow was deadly mad at me. A shower and nail trimming are enough to get this cat to hold a monstrously prolonged grudge.         She sit by the window for a long while, grooming herself occasionally, brooding. So I went on about my chores; vacuuming the floor - while blaming Meow for her abnormal amount of hair fall - , drying my hair, and brewing coffee.         She started pacing and meowing, asking someone to open the window screen and let her out. So I walked over.          “You want to get out?” I said, “fine, are you still mad at me?”          She looked at me hopefully, for a second, then turned around and put her back to me          “Suit yourself,” I said. (Now she has given up and went under the sofa, to groom herself even more, I guess.)         The coffee machine was ready. I’d used up the last grain of our coffee, which I just grounded yesterday, but it still couldn’t fill the filter. I know I have a smaller, single cup filter somewhere, but can’t be

I wrestled with Meow this morning. It started out peacefully, at least on my end. I decided to give her a long-overdue wash.  The weather was perfectly warm,  and she was way too filthy in my opinion. She started crying for help the moment I threw her into the shower compartment.   “Fine, I’ll make this quick,” I said. I rinsed her carefully and rubbed on the soup carefully; I checked the water temperature constantly and never wet her face.  I sang to her, and soothed her whenever I had a spare hand.  Where was the pain?  Yet she still cried and scratched the glass door vehemently as if she was being tortured. Midway through this endeavor, she decided to climb onto me and curl on my thighs.  I had no choice but to let her be, and keep chasing her with the shower head (I have to always chase her, never grab her.  It’s the only possible way this monstrous task can be done without bloodshed.  Or relatively