There are days when you just want to touch upon everything lightly. You want to keep a distance between yourself and all the molecules in your surroundings. It's like if something must touch you, you'd prefer that it does so in a featherlight way. I don't know what to call it really, but these are days wherein my spirit seems to be in a sense of suspended animation, every passion is stilled, and every emotion is blunted. There's a heaviness in me which causes these states, yet at the same time I feel as if i'm floating in apathy. Strange, this desire not to be too bored, yet not too excited about the things going on around me. Queer, that while I want to feel things, literally and figuratively, I want to do so only with the brush of a fingertip, I don't want anything to do with what's beneath the surface.

Beauty only as long as it's skin deep, as they say, I have no interest in depth or intentions or anything whatsoever that's underlying. I have need only for the aesthetic. I will look no further than what my eyes can see.

How unlike me.
niz on 09:13 AM CST [ link ]

What does one do when one is faced with a movie as lyrical as poetry, so rife with symbolism which will provoke one's imagination, and told in a tone and in words so eloquent you feel as if you've been submerged into the fountain wherein all storyteller's bathe and upon arising are somewhat different from the rest of us? One is humbled, an immensely rare feeling, and finds oneself seduced into a state of reflective reverence.

At least, that's what took place in my case, and I being what I am, allowed the movie and the concepts in it to sink into both my conscious and unconscious for a day or two, then I decided to go for the jugular and glut myself on the lifeblood of the movie, to become drunk on the magical images and stories encapsulated in it. Time, as they say, to reel in the catch, to capture the big fish which i've been baiting for days, at least, temporarily. I'll let it swim free after this blog is complete.

See, varying perspectives seen from perceptions attuned to the most minute detail, and sensitized enough to catch every whiff of emotion which emanate from these perspectives are what bring depth and power into the events which comprise our lives. Our perceptions are what give dimensions to these moments, allowing them to be beautiful or repulsively hideous depending on how we see things. It is in this light that it was the way a man saw his life, the people surrounding him, and his experiences which made the movie so completely captivating. The power of the storyteller combined with a hunger to live life in all its glory is immeasurable. To see through this man's bright and eager gaze is as unsimilar as seeing the end of life through the glass eye of a witch. To see through the eyes of Edward Bloom is like seeing life literally come alive.

The title of the movie Big Fish, for instance, may fall flat to callous ears. Many have heard of the saying 'Better a big fish in a small pound than a small fish lost in the ocean'. And indeed, there are many big fish swimming around in the ocean, and plenty more who opt to remain in their small ponds, but in the case of Edward Bloom, the legend surrounding the uncatchable and clever catfish, 'The Beast', was as interlaced with his life in a way which would make it seem as if thinking that the title of the movie was flat is like comparing the Himalayas to a highway. Absurd.

It would even make sense in a fantastic kind of way that the uncatchable 'Beast', the catfish with a golden wedding band in its belly is the gallant protagonist Edward Bloom, a traveling salesman who fancies himself as a storyteller with an insatiable need to explore the world and who came to stay, albeit temporarily, in a swimming pool world of domesticity, using the bathtub to keep from 'drying out' as he would like to say, when he would thirst for the vastness of the 'big ocean' which is the whole world.

So is the man the fish? Could Edward Bloom really be 'The Beast'? Again, it's a matter of perspectives and perceptions. Whereas perceptions can alter the shade or mood, even the context of certain instances, it cannot alter truth, and if we look at the way Edward Bloom lived his seemingly unbelievable life, suddenly the unseemly idea of whether Edward Bloom could be 'The Beast' makes sense. Suddenly, what is impossible becomes possible. All of a sudden, while life may be symbolic, one cannot deny the truth of it. One less of a burden upon our perceptions.

Does it really matter then that Edward Bloom made an unexpected, lifelong friend in a giant of a man who he initially attempted to offer himself up to as a human sacrifice in order to stop the giant from devouring the crops in his town? Or whether the ringmaster of the circus he offered his services up to for free, practically consigning himself to slave labor, in exchange for the name of the girl which made time stop for him, was really a werewolf? Or whether the idyllic town of sceptre really existed, a hidden piece of heaven on earth which would not appease the adventurous spirit of the young man? All these would prove to be inconsequential when all these seemingly wondrous, fairytale characters proved themselves to exist during the most human time of Edward Bloom's life, his funeral.

They weren't inconsequential to Edward Bloom's son though. While his father was still living, everything, every story his father told him was subject to doubt and misunderstanding. I believe that it was only in the end when Edward Bloom gave up his most precious possession, the story of his life, for his son to tell that he was finally able to comprehend the magical tale of his father's life.

Suddenly the son becomes the storyteller in whose hands lie the telling and unfolding of what will be the end of his father's story, in essence, the end of life. Perhaps it was then that he believed.

That's my perception at least.

I'm setting 'The Beast' free now the way the son did when his father died, releasing the legendary cat fish into the rivers to swim where it will, to touch and amaze others with its story, into the mind's of those who think of it as a whimsical tale as myth, into the hearts of those who believe. I'm releasing 'The Beast' into the dark waters of both my conscious and my unconscious, to stir what it may, to swim into my heart should it will to do so during the moments when I find it the hardest to have faith, and to believe.
niz on 11:14 AM CST [ link ]

Melancholy, this is definitely melancholy. It isn't about the shoes though. See, all it took was a little upward curl of my lip to show the store's owner a glimpse, just a hint, of the fangs which are hidden beneath, to set her off on a chorus of apologies. It isn't qs either, he's being as sweet as my favorite chocolate mousse cake, but it's so nice to be soothed though, to have someone make an effort to show you that he appreciates you. Maybe it's the food, the fact that both oyster cake and my favorite salads have taken a hiatus from my digestive system. Maybe it's the worrisome ache in my throat, and my clogged nose. Maybe it's pre-menstrual stress. It's still melancholic.
niz on 11:56 AM CST [ link ]

Have you ever had a day turn out so badly, not badly in a serious sense, but rather, badly in a sense that a minor chain of unexpected events take place, and the only option you have left to deal with these incidents besides howling at the moon and sprouting fur down your spine is to just throw your hands in the air and laugh at yourself, and finally, when you've recovered your breath from laughing tearfully at the 'comedy' of errors which is your day, comfort yourself with the thought that at least these little debacles have somehow given you something to blog about?

I'm trying to trace how things started going slightly amock considering how the day started out relatively pleasantly with a visit from my grandmother first thing in the morning wherein she gave me a bag which I decided to use because I knew it would make her happy, besides, it wasn't half bad looking, considering. I emptied my current favorite bag, the one i've been using for the past few weeks, and even made a point of making sure that I transferred my office keys from one bag to the next, I even double checked, too bad that I must have checked once too many times because when I got to work, the keys were nowhere to be found, i'd transferred them right back to my old bag which must have decided to take vengeance on me on the belief that I had discarded it. Okay, so someone had an extra set of keys so I won't hold a grudge over that. Besides, it's nice to be appreciated, even if it's just by a bag.

I won't even go on about how i've been stuck using Lipton iced tea for days ever since some other greedy iced tea hog decided to go on a flurry of buying all the packs of Nestea lemon flavored iced tea displayed in all the groceries in the area and how I decided that i'd be magnanimous about it, and just wait it out with Lipton while Nestea was attempting to replenish their stock until I took a sip from the insulated thermos I thought i'd try out this morning to hold my 'brew' *cackle*, and what I tasted was about, oh, 99% of iron oxide mixed with something too unpleasant to even think of defining the taste of, and less than 1% of what used to be Lipton's version of what iced tea should be. Okay, so i'm over that as well.

But the straw which finally broke the camel's back were the shoes. Oh those shoes. I have to hold back tears thinking about them, tears of rage mixed in with tears of half-deranged laughter. Before that though, I won't even dwell too much on about how when we got to this place in Manila which will soon probably be known as the world's capital of piracy wherein there are copies of everything which was, about a moment ago, unique, patented and original, the first thing my eyes lit on was an exact facsimile of the bag I was using which just this very morning my grandmother was proudly extolling as expensive, which I took to mean, original. If the bag had already not been on my shoulder before I had entered the stall, make that stalls, I may very well have been accused of shoplifting. Okay, so there were about a dozen bags just like the one I was using all over the place, no big deal.

I was just happy though about getting the chance to finally purchase the immitation (*grin* after the bags, how can you expect that it would be an original?), though, [-brand-deleted-to-preserve-at-least-an-ounce-of-pride-] driving shoes which I saw almost a week ago. Truth is I wasn't expecting that it would still be there because of the split second purchase of goods in this place. To my delight though, they were still there, in among one of the most far off stores of the place, right where I left them the week before. I had to try on four pairs till I got to one that fit comfortably as there seemed to be some discrepancy about its sizing and the size my feet normally wear. Anyhow, it was decided in the end that I get the black ones instead of the blue ones which attracted me at first because there were no longer any sizes available. After a lenghty discussion with the owner of the store and her minions (you'll see in a second why I refer to them as such), about the attributes of the color I had finally settled on, I bartered and got the price I asked for and went happilly on my way, shoe box in hand. It was clear to me at this point that since I had discarded the blue ones because they pinched my feet that it was obvious that it were the black ones I was purchasing, especially after having them try so hard to convince me that this pair looked more striking anyway.

So we walked the long way back to the car and when I excitedly opened the box to get a glimpse of my much awaited rubbershoes, I felt a sick sense of horror as I saw that the shoes nestled in the box were the too tight blue ones. I am rendered mute for a second before a wave of unadulterated rage washed over me at their sheer... I don't even know if it's incompetence or duplicity. All I know is that since the shop was closed by the time we returned to let them know that they had given me the wrong pair of shoes, I have no choice but to go back tomorrow. Nothing left to do then but to resign myself to going home empty handed after days of waiting. I couldn't very well camp out in front of their store for the night.

I just had to smile to check if I still could.

I am finally seeking comfort in the oxtail (though this time they used innards) stew which I was having for dinner after having have relayed the sorry tale to qs who mercifully enough didn't scold me for being too careless to check the box, when all of a sudden while trying to tug a piece on my plate into half, it spurts sauce right into my white shirt and into the white linen of the chair i'm sitting on, right in front of our laundrywoman who considers these linens as her pride and joy.

Besides this blog though, today's mishaps and qsez insights on the matter have provided me with priceless lessons as well. First, when you buy shoes, it isn't enough to check the box to make sure that the shoes there are the ones you actually bought, you must wear the shoes out of the store and not take them off till you get into bed lest the wily salesladies switch them as you walk. This also applies to clothes, price tags, new clothes smell and all, don't take them off until you're safely out of the store, not until you have your laundry basket in sight, and speaking off laundry, as for food, don't bother cutting them up into small pieces, swallow them whole if you must to avoid ruining the linens, learn to control your gag mechanism lest you end up doing more harm than good.

Or you can follow your father's half joking advice and avoid buying immitation rubbershoes, only to have him at a loss for a reply when your mother tells him to give you money to buy original ones first.

Laughter then, tinged with insanity as it may be, is unavoidable.
niz on 10:47 AM CST [ link ]

I decided to let my weary mind off for the evening, and enjoy the hand to eye coordination necessary to turn out a blog sans the mind. I'm even allowing myself to believe the wacky excuse I made up earlier that while habitual stupidity is both a cause and symptom of the degeneration of our thought faculties, and this is scientifically proven, an actual yellowing of dark hair, a night of mindlessness will, in contrast, allow one's braincells to recuperate and to multiply... hehehe, especially when those cells don't have the benefit of sufficient sleep to heal them. Fact is, I already had something with enough depth to blog about. Unfortunately there are days when it seems as if my brain has a mind of it's own (imagine that), a mind which seems to have very strong ideas about 'The Rights of Bodily Organs Labor Code', particularly the section about vacation leaves though I probably ought to argue that my brain is more muscle than organ considering the means it uses to get its way.

On a more serious note (aha, is this a flicker of brain activity I detect?), I have to say for the record that besides 'I love you.', among the sweetest words a person can ever hear are the words 'I'm sorry.', and i'm not talking about an apology made for the sake of it but rather a sorry which comes from understanding, an added perk is that it was made out of love. It is all the more cherished when you know how difficult apologies are to come by from this person. Among those in the world who I think highly of and regard with the greatest of respect and admiration are those who can not just admit to their mistakes, but who can make ammends for them.

So thank you and again, for the record, because you were sorry, nothing's to forgive.

Besides, since the time of your first 'I love you.', a lifetime's worth of forgiveness was already yours to do with as you pleased, so technically, your sorry wasn't necessary, still, it was nice to hear.
niz on 08:53 AM CST [ link ]

We live in a serendipitious world, a world of missed chances, and chance encounters which lead to second chances. A world where the ticktock of a clock's sweeping hand in one place is mirrored to the second by a clock in an opposite corner of the globe whose face may reflect a different hour of the day but whose hands nonetheless record exactly the same passage of time through the world as the other clock. All of us live in one time.

You pass by a corner on your regular route of the day and a little beggar stands there, barely dressed in rags, his face blackened with the exhaust from oblivious vehicles roaring past, much the same way you do. You take another road on the way back from wherever you were headed and you pass another corner, nothing much about this place similar to the first corner which you passed earlier but for the little girl in tatters holding her hand out to you, the too large eyes in the gaunt face which have seen too much, begging you not just for coins, but for the lost childhood, the stolen sense of humanity.

You're coasting down the road when out of nowhere a derelict looking passenger jeepney cuts in front of you with their trademark gall and rudeness, you jerk your foot down on the breaks and end up lurching forward from the sudden movement. You open your window and curse at the driver who pointedly ignores you as he speeds away. You continue on your way only to end up behind another accursed jeepney, which, judging from the cornucorpia gaudily adorning it and the rust holding it together, may have very well been the first, but for the differing plate numbers. Passengers make their way turtlelike out of the jeep which has decided considerately to let them off right smack in the middle of the road, fed up, you blast your horn, hoping to at least hurry them up. Apparently the passengers have all been prematurely deafened by the obnoxiously loud music blaring from the jeepney's speakers. All attempts at harrying them come to naught as besides being deaf they seem to have taken up permanent residence on the road judging from their pace.

I've been looking for the key to unlock last night's blog as always only to locate it in the most unusual place, in the belly of a Big Fish, though 'my precioousss' might very well be shaped in the form of a gold wedding band. Thoughts are strange that way. They can make your mind tingle for days on end, flaunting the idea in abstract right under your very nose, yet allowing themselves to be crafted into words only when they feel that the time is right, when the final piece falls into place.

That seemed to be the case last night.

For the last few days i've been wondering how is it that being human is to us both our greatest source of pride and our best excuse for behaving in the most wretched and reprehensible ways. How many times have we been afflicted with feelings of envy, jealousy, and spite towards our fellow human beings only to justify feeling this way by claiming that we are 'only' human? Since when did humanity sink below the level of the maggot in terms of courtesy and decency? Maggots at least profess no claim to greatness, humans believe themselves to be the crowning glory of evolution, blessed and divine, and yet we use the very fact that we belong to the human race to excuse all of our misdeeds and our bad behaviors.

It's no wonder then why we are so quick to categorize acts of extraordinary bravery and nobleness as the stuff out of legends, as myth which have no place in reality. People who would stand by their morals, who would go out of their way to show compassion, who would fight for what they believe in, and who would give others the benefit of the doubt instead of indulging in petty rumors are fools ripe for mockery, that is if they survive long enough. And if they die early fighting for their principles or for the good of others, they would make interesting characters to add to the roster of those who to us are more legend than real, as too big to have a place in our narrow minds. It's not that we stopped believing in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny and of course, the Tooth Fairy, it's not that we outgrew them, rather, they grew too large for the petty adult human world which we inhabit. We've reduced ourselves with our excuses into a level of dustlike, insignificant specks of smallness and spite.

What then can we make of our humanity when we consider those who are gallant, whose hearts are great, and whose visions and imaginations are vast as too good to be true? Dead our heroes might be, but by the very virtue that they could die it could only mean that they too are composed of flesh and blood the way we are, not fairy dust as we might mislead ourselves to believe. Why is it that we now wouldn't know what decency is if it walked right up to us and 'tapped' us politely on the head with a hammer? Since when was being human equated to being a turd?

I'm not aspiring for sainthood. For me martyrdom is for the birds, whereas justice might impassion me still, I was never much suited to public humiliation. When I lose my temper and when I thrash someone verbally for treating me rudely or unfairly, I even console myself in the aftermath by telling myself that I am no saint but neither am I a turd, turds end up stepped on, and not even willingly at that, and I don't make excuses for any inhuman behavior on my part either by claiming that I am 'just human'.

I strive to be human, wherein I can be noble without being consigned to fictitious lore, sainthood is beyond me, and it would cramp my style, there's a wickedness in me which no halo would tame, but at the same time enough decency to keep me from being a turd, enough to at least make me make something of myself worthy of man's original sin, pride.
niz on 07:41 AM CST [ link ]

One of my restless moods took a hold of me last night out of nowhere and lingered in my unconscious even while I slept so that I found myself still uneasy upon waking the next day. I am by nature a rather restless individual, sometimes more so than usual and this was one of those times. These moods leave almost as imperceptibly as they arrive though so I tried not to let it bother me too much, waiting for the inevitable moment when it would dissipate. I was feeling suffocated though by the invisible miasma of heat which seem in part to be a residue of the breath filling the room from the night before and which clog the air worse than ever during the early hours of daybreak. I finally made my way down to the sunlit dining room in the hopes of escaping the oppressive humidity. It was here where I found the relief I was seeking, in more ways than one.

I would like to tell you a story about a little girl who is growing up to be the most loving person in the world even if she has a mother who lack in countless things. You see, there was a time in this little girl's life when she was practically a newborn and was then most in need of a mother's love which coincided with a time in her mother's life which was, to say the least, difficult, confusing and heartrendingly lonely. This was a time when the little girl's mother had lost touch with who she was, and was so overwhelmed with the circumstances facing her that she closed herself off at the expense of the one who was least to blame.

The mother hated, simply, hated, the world for the way it judged and condemned her especially since it seemed to take a perverse satisfaction of punishing her for doing what was right. She was angry with her parents and resented how she felt they were trying to control her, the way they seemed to use the little girl as an excuse to keep her where she was, which was then, the last place she wanted to be. The young mother, sad to say, did not have nurturing instincts to call her own, neither did she have a particular liking for children. None of this was helped by the fact that she was already emotionally distraught and was too lost in her anguish about her life then to have any love left for herself or for her child. Her only desire was to tear away the unwanted restraints which caged her in.

So for four months she left her child and she didn't look back. That little girl spent the first four months of her life cuddled in the arms of, cared for, watched over, and sung to sleep by others who were not her mother. It seemed that for a time the whole world felt the need and the right to pass judgement over that young, confused, and unhappy woman. The whole world except for the one person who had all the right to do so...

I hugged Angel good morning and couldn't resist kissing her smiling, rosebud lips so unlike my own as I have never grown accustomed to smiling after which she asked me to carry her, all forty plus pounds of her. I apologized profusely about why we couldn't take her with us yesterday when we took Powee to his much loved pediatrician for his immunization. I was rewarded by another smile and a sweet sounding 'Okay Mama'. Still feeling blue for the yet unidentified reason, I laid my head down on her soft, chubby lap, then raised it again for a moment to ask her for permission to sleep on her. She patted her lap, stroked my hair in the most gentle way, ironically the way a mother would touch a child and told me to make 'meme', which is her way of telling me to close my eyes and sleep. The next thing I knew she was singing me a lullabye which my mother and I have sung to her since she was born, and when, after I left her for those four agonizing months, she had only her grandmother to sing to her.

In her little voice, I heard all the love which I had witheld from her out of pride, out of confusion, out of pain, and out of fear, love which she gave me without question and without demands as her small hands patted my bowed head. She sung me the lullabyes which I could never sing, and it was as if for those moments the guilt which have haunted me for abandoning her and not being there for her dissapeared into mist.

It was then that I realized that I would still be restless even if I danced myself to exhaustion, that the only thing which had power enough to banish my unsettledness would be infinite love and tenderness, the kind which my two year old gave this morning, and that which qs showed me as he dealt with me with the utmost patience the night before. When Angel took me into her lap as if I were the child and she the mother, I felt as if I could do no wrong, the world and all its accusations past and present faded into nothingess, none of it mattered because all I could hear was her voice singing me a lullabye, putting my soul at ease, and for those brief moments, the need to search and to seek, that indescribable need which drives me to struggle as I do ceased. Heaven itself dwelt in my heart.
niz on 09:35 AM CST [ link ]

Moments of honesty... a proscript to the blog which follows...

I was in a spasm of indecision about what to do with the words I had written. It took me the span of a whole afternoon to decide whether to continue posting the blog or to keep it isolated within the good old edit pad, loyal keeper of many secrets, where it would be meant for my eyes only. I also felt the need to consult with qs on the matter as I do so with all matters including my bathroom habits. Half of me, the part who the person the blog is dedicated to and centers around touched, wanted to go through with it whereas the other side, the one with an inherent disdain for the overly personal, and is repulsed to getting too close to other people, otherwise known as my up to date and highly sensitive defense mechanism, took much longer to come around.

I suppose what finally tipped the odds in favor of posting the blog was realizing how much Lithesome.ICE already meant to me. If I were to censor myself here, here where I meant to be free from all the constraints which have governed my life since birth, then I would be doing myself a disfavor and Lithesome.ICE would loose the meaning of what it is to me, the chance it gives me. A portion of what composes Lithesome.ICE is an unexplored core of me where there are no pretensions and there is no fear, which has never been tainted inspite of the fact that the only means it has to protect itself is the mere fact that it is here where I know who I am. There is where my truth exists. Part of that truth lives through and within Lithesome.ICE. I may do many things here. Play with words I will, maybe play with your mind if the mood strikes me, but as much as I am able, here is where I won't lie and here I won't hide.

A rare moment of openess on my part allowed a deluge of words which tell of a time in my life which I often relate only in my mind to come forth.
niz on 09:22 AM CST [ link ]

After I touched upon Hades' and Persephone's story in last night's blog, an idea for a humorous spoof-like spin-off on the Greek myth popped into my head. Things conspired to make a joke out of my sarcastic remark about PMS and it's purpose for existing in the general scheme of things.

The story of Hades', notorious Greek god of the underworld, and Demeter's daughter, Persephone revolves around how Hades managed to trick Persophone, who loathed him to the highest point of Olympus, into being his queen for half the number of months in a year by tempting her to allow seeds from the promegrenate (yes, the fruit whose name I couldn't call to mind the night before inspite of it being just at the tip of my tongue was a promegrenate, I even toyed with the idea of it being a persimmon) fruit to touch her lips, the general rule of that time seeming to be that should she have eaten anything, anything at all from the realm of Hades', she would have to remain with him and since she was prevented from consuming all the seeds in the fruit by the arrival of Demeter and a rescue party from Olympus, it was decreed by Zeus that she would remain with Hades' for only six months of the year. It's actually the Greek myth that explains why there is a summer and a winter. Anyway, that's what really happens in the Greek version for those who prefer that one to the twisted one which a certain goddess who makes a point to keep abreast with the true going-ons beneath Olympus' airbrush perfect landscape told me in confidence a few hours ago, and who prefers to remain anonymous lest she feel one of Zeus' famed thunderbolts frizz her coiffure.

Hades had the object of his desire, the lovely Persephone, in his realm of the underworld. She had found Charon, the boatman of the river Styx, amusing and had argued with him about his overpriced charge of transporting souls across the river Styx, pointing out that his boat was leaky, and did not even need gasoline to run as it had never seen a motor, worse, since the river was so polluted that it was in itself an environmental hazard, he was lucky that she didn't report him to the Greenpeace much more pay his exorbitant fee of a silver coin. The boatman attempted to argue against her using the price of manual labor in his defense, but she was so adamant and so tightfisted that he finally let her off on the other side of the river for free just to be rid of her.

Hades was puzzled to see Persephone in a state of agitation but finally surmised that the boatman had probably terrified the delicate girl into witlessness, it wasn't an entirely uncommon reaction to Charon from those he had ferried across. He had no knowledge as to how before disgruntling his boatman that she had found the three headed Cerberus adorable and had unnerved the poor hound so with her attempts to kiss his noses that the dog was in a state of hyperventilation and would probably end up in a worst state of dementia than ever before.

Had he known all this perhaps he wouldn't have grieved so that she had eaten only six seeds from the promegranate. Had he known that the months when the earth would blossom with fruits and flowers with the sun shining upon it would in fact be the months when she would be 'imprisoned' with him in the underworld, he would've thought twice about tempting her to eat with such ardor. Had he known that Zeus had had to practically threaten Demeter with embargoes on the amount of sunshine he sent to the earth daily in order for her trees and flowers to thrive if she did not make the trip to the underworld to rescue his already brooding, and now apparently, lovesick, sibling from her errant daughter, he would've reconsidered the merits of remaining as Olympus' most eligible bachelor, at the very least he would've performed the heimlich maneuver on her before the first seed even found its way to her digestive track.

Hades was a crafty one though. He had placed great thought into what fruit it would be best to tempt Persephone with. He initially thought of presenting her with a mango for its delicious sweetness would surely be irresistible even to the most reticent palate, but it was out of season and his smitten heart could not envision the thought of being content with her being with him for just one month of the long and lonely year seeing as how a mango had only one seed. He couldn't very well bring himself to tamper with his future mother-in-law's produce, seeing as he was still trying to win her over and producing genetically engineered mangoes with multiple seeds would hardly serve to further his cause.

He toyed with the idea of tempting her with a jackfruit, true it too had only one seed as well but who could possibly survive swallowing a seed of that size? Being dead, she'd have no choice but to remain forever in the underworld, but then she'd do so as a shade, ephemeral as smoke, and Hades, being extremely touchy for a God, knew that that it just wouldn't do. It didn't take long for him to realize that using a jackfruit would jeopardize his romantic illusions.

He finally hit upon the perfect fruit, the promegrenate. It was a fruit local to his realm and which had numerous seeds. It was delectable enough so much so that he could definitely tempt her to eat a number sufficient to keep her with him for enough months of the year to make him happy, maybe even the whole year if he was lucky enough. Hades could hardly keep from jumping up and down with delight. Only his mile-long, heavy velvet cloak and the crown of obsidian jewels on his head kept his feet on the ground, reminding him that though he was on the verge of sealing a Mutual Understanding that the god of the Underworld need not be behaving like an insipid cupid.

Preoccupied as he was by his thoughts on how to tempt her to eat, Hades did not notice that she had plucked a fruit uninvited, being hungry enough by now to find the Gorgons appetizing. He should have realized that something was amiss by the way she bit off the seeds with her mouth instead of daintily and politely plucking them with her fingertips, having have spent too much of his immortal lifetime in the company of souls who had not much use for food or drink or conversation, Hades was too busy coming up with ways to get her to taste the promegrenate to notice the arrival of Hermes and Demeter, white horses, blaring trumpets, and an arsenal fit to welcome a Greek goddess and all.

By that time it was too late, Persephone, her cheeks and chin smeared by the juices of the promegrenate, had eaten six seeds, and he would be stuck with her forever. Dense by nature and too numbed with joy to comprehend that it was him they were rescuing from Persephone and not the other way around, it never occured to Hades that the tears shed by Demeter upon learning that Persephone had eaten six seeds from the promegrenate fruit, which meant that she would have to stay with Hades for six months of every year were tears of joy and not sadness.

He didn't realize until the next year, and the rest, as they say, is all mischief.
niz on 10:27 AM CST [ link ]

It's that time of the month again. That time when women bloat like bullfrogs, and your chances of slaying a firebreathing dragon would be ten times easier, not to mention, relatively more enjoyable, then cajoling your 'hapless heroine' into doing anything human or worthwhile.

Starvation would be a pointless way to counter 'The Bloat' at this point as hormones seemed to have thrown normal bodily functions into a state of anarchy. The same way that Persephone was forced to abide by Hade's deal of reigning as his unwilling queen of the underworld for certain months of a year after having fallen prey to his cunning, tempted as she was to take a few seeds from the fruit he offered her, i've finally been coerced into accepting that for these few days, all efforts of remaining thin would be held hostage by hormones.

Pre-Menstrual Stress, somewhere in the galaxy there must be a purpose for it... right. *sarcasm sarcasm*
niz on 10:34 AM CST [ link ]

After coming back from the walk I took in the clouds, I decided to return to the point in the divide where I left off a days ago even at the risk of a lawsuit brought against me by the astronauts at the NASA, and by the genetic scientists who I have probably offended by now with my complete and utter irreverence. Of course I don't hold anything against those intent on exploring the cosmos, but as for having my vicinity populated by four legged chickens and the like, well, let's just say that I would go only so far to ensure that my chicken dinner contains a drumstick, besides, I prefer the part attached to the butt myself... hehehe...

Here is where I am in the divide...

And yet we wonder why humans profess an insatiable desire to navigate the stars, the planets and galaxies not our own. The universe, for all the unknowns intrinsic to it, is nonetheless infinitely easier to come to an understanding of than the chaos and complexities, not to mention the conflicting tendencies of our own human minds, especially when you throw the parts of us which are mystical into the equation. Newton and Einstein would throw up their hands in a gesture of surrender if it were we they had to explain away instead of the various laws of physics, unchanging perhaps across space and time, but definable still.

There's the truth of it though we may convince ourselves that it is our thirst for knowledge of the things outside ourselves which drive us to pursue supernovas. It's an escapist attempt which allow us to think of ourselves as noble, when in fact what we secretly believe is that the less we know of ourselves, the better and the safer it is for humanity to remain as it always has, always poised on the verge of some discovery or another, about the universe, about planex X or Y or V, about a weapon which will surely obliterate us, anything and everything but the discovery of ourselves.
niz on 08:48 AM CST [ link ]

I decided with staggering finality this afternoon while the sun was eclipsing my brain with its heat that I wouldn't write about anything today that could be considered as, one, deep, two, dark, and three heavy. I decided that if those thoughts were to reach even an ounce on the bathroom scale that I would flush them down the toilet. *mischievous grin curving lips*

You see, though I use words to unburden myself from whatever heaviness might be weighing me down, moments inevitably come when those very words end up carrying too much of a weight and they slip down my tongue dragging it down, down, and down until it's hanging loose to my toes. It's quite the same as having your foot stuck in your mouth and when this happens I know for sure that it's time to lighten up on myself.

I had every intention of doing just that, I swear. I even made a point of watching, or at least, trying to watch the first five minutes of the movie Timeline which i've been meaning to do for quite some time now. I placed some effort into it even if I felt as soon as it was confirmed that who was originally a professor of archeology in Michael Crichton's book was suddenly morped into the role of 'Dad' in the movie that it was going to be horrible. It was like saying that the trilogy of The Lord of The Rings would remain unchanged if Frodo were to suddenly discover in the movie that Gollum was his long lost father.

I still meant to stick to my word when I resigned myself to the conclusion that I was meant to enjoy Timeline only in its written form and settled on another movie instead, but how is one to remain detached and casual when all of a sudden, flashing before your very eyes, an absolutely heart melting (i'm being trite but I can think of no other way to describe what I saw at this point) story nestled into an enchanting, autumn-nish setting begin stroking awake parts of your mind which you were determined to relax for the evening?

How is one to react when a noble young man, an orphan, without anything significant or noteworthy about him, without a family, having have grown up in an orphanage, without a past, nothing except for the goodness and purity of his heart which shone through every gesture and every intention, reaches out reflexively, protectively, and compassionately to a troubled woman who barfs on his shoulder while he's on a trip to sell chocolates. The woman is pregnant and husbandless and is terrified of facing her restrictively repressive old fashioned family, most of all, of surviving her father's wrath. To save her from shame, he offers to take the guise of her husband.

How can one remain unmoved when upon finding himself in the midst of a beautiful grapevine valley which has been in the woman's family for generations, the young man suffers every insult and affront which her hard hearted and extremely possessive father throws in his direction, cruelly derising him for being an orphan, for having no idea as to who he is or there he came from.

Then how can one not feel one's throat tighten with unshed tears when the dictatorial father, finally having been softened by the young man's earnestness and sincerity realizes that he has been deceived, albeit without any malice, by his daughter and the young man. The hearts which break the most painfully, after all, are those which took the longest to melt, especially if that heart is a father's heart.

And how can one not feel a poignant mixture of sadness and joy when the entire valley of grapevines is burned into ash by a lamp being hurled unintentionally in a fit of rage during a tussle which would've
spelled the end of a whole tradition and a way of life of a family whose pride and fortune has been built in the harvest of its grapes but for the young man who found one live root within the smoldered remains of the original root from where the valley was born?

How then can one not place her foot in her mouth?

niz on 12:36 PM CST [ link ]

I had this thought while in a state of semi-catatonia. I may have been half submerged in a dream and i've been toying with it in my mind for a couple of months now, but only recently has it emerged into an idea seemingly worthy enough to be shared. For countless days now, I finally had to stop keeping track as my musing on the matter seemed interminable, I couldn't help but ponder upon the many questions which confront humanity. These questions do all the confronting as we are left powerless in the face of the confusion, followed by the internal turmoil which they stir up within us, and I couldn't help but realize, in a sudden burst of enlightenment, visible at first practically out of the corner of my mind's eye that many of the questions which we agonize and waste our lives over, and would've wasted the eight that followed should we have been feline, questions about life and the purpose of ours have answers which are ingrained within us as surely as our DNA code which define us in the way of genetics whilst concealing the secret of our uniqueness, unbreakable and impossible to replicate as it may be regardless of how many Dollys the scientists fixated on cloning insist on overpopulating the world with. Should they carry on as they have been doing, it won't be long until mutated nursery rhyme characters outnumber human beings.

As I was saying before a herd of imaginary almost identical sheep danced acrossed my consciousness all bleating out 'Bah bah black sheep,' we look to so many sourses in the hopes of unraveling the mystery of our lives as human beings. We look to the stars, to the breakdown of our physical attributes which is the very purpose of why genetics exists (not necessarily the creation of an assembly line churning out loony nursery rhyme mascots), looking even to other species such as pigs and sheep and the occassional orangutang in our pursuit of answering these questions, all the while claiming that we belong to a higher order of evolution than these animals do. We consecrate ourselves to numerous deities whose way of life we couldn't half care about or adhere to, admitting only to ourselves that we would just as soon bow down to worship the porcelain god, but for the hope that it will bring us redemption.

Then when all else fails, we curse God and ourselves to damnation, too lost in self induced agony and pity to realize that in our haste and our impatience, in the clutch of the sudden desperation which drove us to hunt down what we do not know, that we've traveled and looked everywhere but to the one place where lies the only hope that our questions might be answered. We forgot to look to ourselves, the one to be blamed for raising all those questions in the first place, the root of all our puzzlement.

We never once stopped to consider the awesome implications of why we are capable of asking such questions of immeasurable magnitude and depth in the first place. Never once did we take a moment to think of how is it that these questions seem to materialize from the very source from which they arise, from the answers which we twist ourselves into pretzel like contortions to find. Answers which we choose to avoid for no other reason then that our lives will suddenly be locked into a certainty, and we fear that certainty, the inevitability of it all.

We blanch at the thought of the day when meaninglessness will fall away and shockingly inescapable purpose will stare us unblinking in the face. We find ourselves as potential roadkill in the overwhelming face of the truths we half hoped we would never discover which is the very reason why we practically transported ourselves to the moon and to the unreachable stars beyond, everywhere but the place where we knew the answers would be.

All of a sudden every excuse to dither and stall and to procrastinate ourselves to death is lost to us, uncertainty and its comforting cloak of ambivalence falls away from our hunched shoulders and all hope of deluding ourselves is ripped from us. When you find those answers, whatever they may be, i'm afraid there's no going back. The baby steps which we take to enable us to wobble through life will no longer be enough, it'll only take a leap of faith without even a blindfold for comfort to bring you to the next divide.

Please bear with me as I am still in the process of making my way across.
niz on 10:59 AM CST [ link ]

The problem about blogging is that it's addictive and while the age old adage that 'too much of anything is always bad' holds true for most things, I can't bring myself to agree that it applies to blogging. Perhaps the only unfortunate effect of blogging is that when you start you want to blog about every little thing which occurs in every minute of the day, even about instances which are in fact so boring and insignificant to the populace in general that reading such will surely make them crack their jaws in a yawn, and yet, very much aware of this, you still cannot bring yourself to stop, nevermind that they fall asleep halfway through the blog you were typing with such earnestness and which you spent practically an hour straining your on eyes just to catch those immensely slippery grammatical errors, and their elusive partners in crime, the infamous typo at large, my most hated adversaries.

No, knowing that your supposed readers are snoring away as you type, you still have to relate the tedious tale about how worried you were about the already manic Monday which seems to unavoidably come about after every weekend, about how you were thisclose to getting into a fistfight and laying a one-two-knockdown whack on a certain bossy and obsessive yet undeniably loveable individual breathing hot breath down your already sweaty nape, and about how horrible the weather is, effectively transforming an allegedly tropical climate sought after by tourists who want to lie on its talcum powder-esque whiter than white beaches with their bikini tops askew into a half decent immitation of the Sahara. No wonder the pirated DVD toting, humanitarian folks who inspire fear in the bigot minded, and who seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for movie loving citizens whose funds are tied to the milkbottle feel perfectly at home. We applaud your efforts at thwarting [-name-deleted-because-some-people-with-dubious-eyesights-claim-he-holds-a-similarity-to-my-husband-lookswise-]'s pitiful efforts at raiding your stalls.

Point proven exactly. Blogs lead us to expose portions of our minds so giddy and dizzying with its barrage of whirling thoughts and ideas that we are actually swept away into an array of run-on sentences which would make our high school English teachers apoplectic with rage. Particular as I am about grammatical perfection to the point of it being a paranoia though, those run-on sentences occupy a very cozy spot in my heart.

I love it, all of it, I can never tell you just how much, the digressions I make, the vagueness I can form into a pinprick so subtle you don't feel it pricking your soul, whether to draw blood or to soothe, depending on whether it's the demon in me you've roused or the well concealed angel, and though I often fight it, claw at it, and shriek from the intensity with which it grips me, the life which makes it necessary for these words to flow.
niz on 10:55 AM CST [ link ]

The epilogue to this Easter Sunday's Family Dinner...

After this evening's gastritis inducing gastronomic experience, I cannot for the life of me conceive how the Chinese population can possibly remain as bloated as it is in number considering how potent the spices which flavor their traditional dishes are. The fact that their population does not suffer a downward trend due to burst blood vessels and daily onslaughts of coronary thromboses due to the spices in question baffle the mind. One night of having fish fillet in tausi sauce for dinner and my head and my stomach, if not my wallet seeing as how I didn't have to spend a single cent, are already paying the price for my cravings.

Perhaps it's because they have an enzyme in their bodies specifically designed to breakdown these spices into aphrodisiac form to be put to good use which might account for their population not decreasing.

Whatever the reasons may be, I now see with greater clarity why Chinese food is best eaten at home, adverse reactions notwithstanding and all, headonism will win out over prudence every time, at least, when it comes to food.
niz on 11:44 AM CST [ link ]

A Brief Proscript copied from my handwritten journal :

Before that though, a literally Happy Easter Sunday to me and to everyone else, it has, for the record, been among the happiest Easter Sundays in my life to date...

I can tell from the tremble in my hand having have grown unaccustomed to writing after days of not having held a pen and from the date of the last heading just how long it has been since I last took the time to record my thoughts, and looking back, countless things have taken place since then, meaningful events which somehow managed to sneak their way unwritten past my normally diligent 'thought writing' - an 'argument' with qs was one of them followed by days of healing and reconcilation sealed by a balm of love and forgiveness on the part of both parties i'd like to think.

But right now my mind is very much focused on the long awaited coming about of, hard to believe but it really did come to exist with a 'little' out of character procrastination from qs, my blogsite, Lithesome.ICE. Qs actually waved his magic wand (or if you wish, seeing as how he's male and to avoid the alliteration to the fairy godmothers of our childhood bedtime stories, his magic hat), and seemingly out of thin air created what has become my own blogs. Nevermind that all this occurred after I bullied him and badgered him and laid a layer of guilt on him so thick and creamy that you could've used it as frosting for a Devil's Food Cake. This I topped off with a tantrum so bad that qs probably finally decided that he had better make the blogsite before one or both of us ended up in a mental sanitarium or an institution for the deaf.

In all honesty though, in the light of my loving and perfectly objective gaze, the site was worth all these long months of waiting, whining, and ranting. Just the interface itself with its sleekness, and its elegance, and its graceful lines is so stunning that the only other word I can come up with to describe it is 'celestial'. Tearing my enthralled and awed eyes from it was a major exercise of will, a double effort considering that I had to move both my eyeballs and my contact lenses as well. *impish smile*

So considering that qs was able to do all this including employing mild hypnosis on the Greymatter scripts in order to bend them to his will, me coerciing him and practically cracking a whip over him, another lesson in composure and grace under pressure has been bequeathed to me.

Thank you qs. I guess when love conquers, it subdues not only the one who is captured but the one who perceives himself to be the conqueror as well, even a beast such as myself who has been tamed into a flower carved from Lithesome.ICE. *wink*

niz on 09:51 AM CST [ link ]

Alright, two things, no make that three things, first, one must never use the colloquial 'Alright' if one wishes to be grammatically correct, it wouldn't be in this paragraph but for the fact that i'm in a deceptively casual mood.

Second, I was dancing this afternoon while Robert Palmer was singing about a woman who was 'Simply Irresistible'. In his very words, she was a 'natural law' and she left him 'in awe', and that while ordinary mortals would break promises, she broke laws with ease, and I couldn't help wishing with absolute shamelessness that I could be someone like that instead of this insecure person that I am who can never seem to stop second guessing herself. I would much rather be the law than have everyone trampling all over me just because they perceive themselves to be free.

Third and lastly, a thought occurred to me while I was still dancing that it might very well have been the case that when God was giving out emotional stability that I couldn't hear him yelling and calling out my number over the loud music that was playing in the right and left feet line (as opposed to having two left feet).

Whoever said that dancing was a physical activity? *rueful face*
niz on 08:37 AM CST [ link ]