odds n' ends
どこでもいいよ
I locked hands with someone. Watched as our fingers withered to ivory bones from which willow branches sprouted. Our grandparents’ hands. Sinewy legacies intertwined in young folly.
The black and white stripes of my shirt stretched into thin rivers of the galaxy, each the microcosm of adjacent parallel worlds. Happy endings. Sad endings. Both thrived in harmony. The creation of Earth condensed into a singular species. Homo sapiens. What a silly word that did not roll off the tongue quite the right way. A pigeon looked me in the eye and chirped, “We are not heliocentric. Only anthropocentric.” I saw a friend’s God somewhere. He donned a business suit and harnessed an elephant’s head to breathe more deeply. Quite the elegant strategy. The way I counted stars was different from how they counted their planets. The little prince would not be returning to his rose today. But plants watered themselves when devoid of expectations. That was how we matured. Me and you and everyone else. But it all returns to a center of gravity. Anchor my ship to your boundless sea. Tell me ghost stories so that I may dream again someday. Sometimes, I think about a quiet night in the woods. I walk around with no particular destination in mind and I lend my ears to the rustling leaves. Stars that are most definitely not moons linger overhead and I pretend to name some patterns arbitrarily selected from my limited knowledge of constellations. Deneb. Altair. Vega. I run out already. Some elusive Spitz song plays in the background and the figure in front of me hums to the tune with imperfect pitch. The figure is always a boy with a toothy grin because I am not creative enough to envision alternatives. He dons a plaited scarf, wool slacks, and an oversized linen duffle coat, everything in earthy tones of ochre and olive green. A friend asks me whether dress really matters. In the end, of course not. You will like an uncouth bum with three-day-old hair and the atrocious combination of white sports socks and slippers if you like that person, but the way one carries him or herself is telling of personal aesthetics. It’s like reaching for the same book out of a hundred others in a library. Or having a mutual art crush that leads to an art trade. Perhaps, when I am feeling especially cheesy one lazy Spring morning, I suddenly have the urge to paint a watercolor of us, but only restricting myself to my favorite colors. See? Accessibility. Pardon my selfishness. There’s a comforting sorrow in earthy hues, like the haziness one experiences upon waking from a long dream. Sometimes, they call the sadness idealization. So when you meet a complementary ideology, is your heart not filled with some inexplicable joy? Perhaps they will also be a Piscean INFP. Wait, narcissism? What? although if it's yuzuru hanyu he doesn't need fashion--he can wear his birthday suit for all i care hahaha ;;
The number four can be tastefully expressed in binary. But it is quite arbitrary—why must we have four years of high school, four years of university? Why not three or five? Why must we start classes in the autumn and end in the spring? I digress. When the upward climb to classes is still inevitably accompanied by sheets of white, however, anyone would be skeptical of the arrival of spring. A season for encounters in the east, but partings in the west. I never said goodbye to my high school friends when we sang that last Disney medley during graduation because I thought their smiles would be an easy text and a ninety minute subway ride away.
I am not very fond of the phrase “goodbye” in general; “see you” is a more euphemistic substitute. But the latter is a salutation that is harder to use here, especially when people come and go in steady cycles of four. It would be alright if everyone was the same age—we would all run happily hand-in-hand across the finish line (trope!)—but of course that sort of idealization only inspires tears in poorly written YA novels. In two months, the seniors will graduate and return to their own respective cities and lives, become the coveted figures known as ALUMS! that everyone flocks to for chances of internships. And with them, they will probably take all the late-night karaoke sessions, fake-deep discussions about love and happiness, and Pokemon GO adventures away. In fourteen months, the current juniors will follow suit. Rinse and repeat. Goodbye? More like badbye. They say they will come back and visit. That’s nice. I will probably miss them less with the passage of time. That’s sad. They’re already formal adults, sort of. Meanwhile, we’re just muddling through—I am still technically pre-med on my transcript, too wary of confrontation to have that final discussion. And I am childish for being sentimental. Carpe diem is but a term conceptualized upon the imagery of a group of youngsters merrymaking like tomorrow is the end of the world. Life goes on, is all. Four years ago seems like yesterday, yet four years into the future feels a little like eternity. I wonder if my senior self will still have bangs. If you’re not happy now, I hope you are happy four minutes later. That is not the reason the concept of time was invented, but you can believe so all the same. |
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July 2019
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