Poetry

This is a little experiment.

Some people write poetry, and seem to be almost completely detached from it. If you ask them what it means, they just shrug and say 'it's just a poem'. They're either very private or very indifferent. You have to respect that, either way.

I'm...not like that. All my poems mean something to me.

My English teacher showed us a story he wrote which seemed, to me, a very personal memoir. He also wrote a commentary for it, and it was fascinating. It made the story so much more meaningful.

So...I'm going to try that. I guess this is one of the many times I'm just writing for myself. Bear with me.

Perfect from a Distance

I've always written my poetry from my own perspective; it seems the obvious choice. I wrote this as an experiment; an attempt to try and get into the heads of some of the men I have known in my life, especially ones who took an interest. I was meditating a lot on the need for female perfection, and the constant pressure on me to be perfect; and how, by not being perfect, women are considered to be inherently undeserving of love.

동무

동무 is an old Korean word for 'friend', although it has deeper meanings than the current word, 친구.

I have taken some lines from the existing letters and speech transcripts of the wives of Henry VIII; Catherine Howard's love letter to Thomas Culpepper, Henry VIII's love letters to Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon's famous speech before the Legatine Court, Anne Boleyn's speech on the scaffold, and her jailor's notes of her conduct during her imprisonment. Henry VIII and his wives lived during a time of great feminine influence and turmoil, in the context of a period known for misogyny and the silence of women. The existing records on these fascinating women are few and far between, but I thought them to be fascinating and tragically macabre inspiration.

하얀 사랑

I had always thought of the colour of love was red - 'red, the colour of desire', as Marius from Les Miserables famously sings about his fifty-second sweetheart Cosette. Red is such a paradoxical colour - the colour of love but also the colour of hate, the colour of blood and all its connotations of life and death, a violent, angry, irrational colour, a warm, comforting colour.

It is interesting to note, then, that the poet Emily Dickinson considered white to be the colour of passion and intensity; red is fire's 'common tint' - a truly passionate, intense person glowed white hot.

The title of this poem translates to 'White Love', and I hoped to explore the colours and complexity of emotion - the passion and intensity of the self and of relationships. I also see this is a kind of sequel to one of my earlier poems, 부용화 - in it I had used the traditional colour symbolism of white as purity and red as passion, and white as the beginning and red as the destination. I think it's also interesting to note that the pacing of 부용화 conveys a sense of desperation and motion until finally 'she is content/the sun sets on red'. In 하얀 사랑, the tables are turned - red is no longer a representation of content, white is. And white love is a state that is yet to be found.

Saudade

The most powerful and poignant and dangerous things we say to each other are three words long. I love you, I hate you, I want you, leave me alone, need you now...I have said them all, all with varying degrees of effect or lact thereof. When I'm crying or in the middle of a panic attack the only way I can make myself talk is to break things up into groups of three - but it's very harsh and unnatural, talking like that - you lose the heartbeat rhythm of iambic petameter, the graceful poetry of beautifully sophisticated and articulated discourse, the quick wit of easy conversation. When you're angry dark rage can sometimes give you unbelievable courage and clarity; it's only when you lose it that words appear at random and nobody quite knows what you're saying, even you. When you speak like that your words seem so much more childish and vulnerable, with all the cadences made harsh and urgent, the meaning of perfectly formed sentences all hectic and confused.

My primary school is this ugly, utilitarian prison complex thing built in the 60s, mostly from concrete and red brick - now with some fancy renovations and extensions put in place after I graduated. Before I became properly depressed I used to complain at how...down and out I felt, how helpless and claustrophobic it is, when the sun shines and the skies are clear but the frost chills you to the bone; something very common in the classic Perth winters. But even on those days when the glaring Western Australian sun just mocks you the bricks are always warm, and when I had had enough I would press myself against one of the abundance of red brick walls and cry.

There were peppermint trees, too, bent and twisted like old wise women with tricky roots to trip you up. At one point all the girls thought that if you ate the leaves they tasted like actual peppermints but apparently that's not the case. But when I stood under them the soft green leaves would brush against my face and...

You might have gathered that I cry a lot - I always have, and I know it freaks people out but I am entirely too comfortable with it. My depression really escalated when I tried to supress all of my emotions and I feel better crying instead of trying (and failing) to keep it all in. And really, the people who really love you hold you when you cry no matter what is making you cry; real friends never laugh at the things that bring tears to your eyes.

A few days ago I posted 'nostalgia is the seduction of what we want but can't have juxtaposed with the guilt of losing something we probably never had in the first place. Nostalgia doesn't mean that the past was better; it just means that the present, for the present, is not good enough' on Facebook, and then a friend of mine told me to look up 'saudade'. Saudade is a Portuguese word with no direct English translation - it refers to the melancholic longing for an absent something, the 'love that remains' after someone is gone, the recollection of something which, through reliving, lets you live again. And I think, in the aftermath of a period of great recklessness and excitement in my life, now that I am old enough to look back and be properly nostalgic for times and places and people I will never know again, my life has become a time of saudade; the restlessness of the exhaustion that follows after a frustratingly fruitless but beautifully bittersweet time.

It is difficult to rebuild relationships after the ram has touched the wall, after you've burned all your bridges and passed the point of no return. It is harder still to trust someone you have always trusted until now, now that something has happened that has made you lose faith but not lose love. Love is the only thing keeping us together, keeping me together, but it's such a fragile bond. Back in the day when I trusted blindly I was desperate for love, desperate for someone to be there for me, a friend to have my back, a shoulder to cry on. And now I have that, but I am learning too late the importance of trust, how strong the bonds of trust are and how easy they are to lose and take for granted. Love without trust is brittle and fragile and constantly threatens to crumble to dust under the weight of insecurities and mistrust. And with this miserable state of affairs comes the regret of saudade, the regret of nostalgia; I will never regret anything, but if we loved again I swear I'd love you right and maybe, just maybe, we could still trust each other the way we used to.

Green Light

John Green argues that the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's dock in The Great Gatsby is one of the most important uses of symbolism in American literature. It represents the American dream, the feverish need to cling on to the past, an unsatiable lust for the 'good old days', a nonexistent golden age of innocence and happiness, and the longing of forbidden or unrequited love. It represents the unexplainable and undeniable lure of things and people we can never have. That's what the first stanza is about - seeing in someone or something all the things you want but can't have, wanting all the things that aren't yours and aren't good for you. In Florence + the Machine's Over the Love, written for the upcoming Gatsby film, those lines are repeated over and over and it's very compelling and dramatic and intense, which is a recurring theme in Flo's music - the constant repetition of the title in Never Let Me Go is the most iconic part of the song.

I think all girls are scared of becoming their mother, but also every daughter wants to, and ultimately fails to be, a 'perfect version' of their own mother. I've recently developed a serious...attachment to lattes and I can smell coffee on my breath in the same way you can sometimes smell the smell of someone else on you or how a random breeze makes your own perfume waft over you. Like everything that I notice that normal people with actual things to do and real friends to associate with ignore, it brought on a wave of nostalgia to times with my own mother, who is also a faithful coffee guzzler. In some ways I have become like my mother, either coincidentally or because my mother is, for all her faults, a pretty amazing woman and any woman in the world should want to be like her. But in spite of that, through a combination of my own strengths and flaws, my inexperience in life but my experience as a young person in a modern world, the multitude of things that makes my mother and I two very distinct people and I...I do not have her strength. I have the courage of a young person and the anger of battlescars but I haven't got that kind of steely endurance people from the other generations have, the kind of determination only time can give.

And I feel like I need that, sometimes. Recklessness can only get you so far, and fearlessness doesn't protect you from feeling broken. When you're young you can't imagine life differently, you can't imagine living without people without whom, to be perfectly honest, you could live without.

Like most obnoxiously privileged people living in an absurdly abundant capitalist society I bought into the myth that the ultimate satisfacation of being young is romantic love. In some way this idea - whether true or not - is not given enough credit, because wanting a romantic partner is perceived as a weakness or some kind of perversion when it is neither. But in other ways...romantic love isn't the be all and end all of things, I realise that now, just as I realise as there's nothing wrong with wanting it. But...more than that. Trust. I realised a little while ago that I don't trust anybody; and for good reason, too, I might add. But it's very hard and heartbreaking and unbelievably lonely.

You know what's weird? Eye contact. It's really quite scary and if I'm talking to 'you' I know I am probably talking to a tree and hoping that you can hear me. I have never said anything remotely difficult or confronting with full on eye contact; my locker in high school has been at the receiving end of far too many awkward confrontations. I mean, I know you can see me whether I'm looking at you or not. But that's not the point.

I'm fascinated by eyes - the most interesting people have the most interesting eyes. I may only be 5'2" but my eyes are black and when I'm angry they're pretty scary; I'm also pretty infamous for my puppy eyes. The same pair of eyes can be soft and sweet, huge and endearing and framed in thick lashes, hard and cold and unforgivingly cruel, intense and fiery. I love twinkly eyes, winky eyes, haunting dark intense eyes, eyes that laugh before the person does, eyes that always smile at you. But when you stop trusting someone a different green light becomes apparent...mistrust, jealousy, envy, greed, anger, frustration...all these ugly words, all in a gleam of an eye.

Smother

The first time I heard Smother by Daughter is a fanvid for Lucrezia and Cesare from The Borgias, who have a fascinatingly twisted, dysfunctional relationship but underneath a profound and unshakable bond of trust and love and I thought about how relationships become like oxygen, and how life makes you breathe even if every breath is poision just because we are so helplessly addicted and dependent on air. I can't breathe without you but I have to...

And then at the same time relationships can be suffocating; people can smother you. And you can let yourself drown, too; you drown when people aren't there to keep you afloat. It's a Catch 22.

Performance artists Ulay and Marina Abramovic did a piece in which they joined mouths and breathed each others' breaths, before passing out seventeen minutes later from oxygen deprivation - they were exploring an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it. That's what love does - it's beautiful and tragic and silly all at once. We suffocate each other in our doomed attempts to breathe forever.

A concept I found linked to smothering is silencing; I've said before that I can get very caught up in the heat of the moment and the things that happen in the present are very confusing and silencing for me. And in relationships, especially the most suffocating ones, especially the ones you need like oxygen...you need to talk, or you let yourself get silenced and suffocated.

Somebodies

There are always people swirling around my head - mostly because I don't understand people, so I waste far too much time trying to decipher all the weird things they do and say and think. So this poem was written about three people...only one of whom, you might have gathered, I am on speaking terms with. Making enemies is a kind of...talent of mine.

Being attractive makes you a bit of a bitch. That in itself, now that I think about it, sounds incredibly pretentious and self absorbed, but...put it this way, whatever looks back at me in the mirror now is a definite improvement to the goblin me of years past, in a time and place where the attention I got from men was so minute that I would have been crying with joy if I had gotten half the amount of attention that I have from people twice as creepy as some people I have had the misfortune to meet. And now I'm just not very impressed by a lot of people anymore and...it's weird, how you always have more to say about the people you hate than the people you love, because the relationships that take a turn for the freaky are defined, for me, by misunderstanding, by an inability to speak my mind which is a constant frustration for me, something that I try to remedy as best I can with poetry. The things I can't say to the people who have screwed me over and broken my heart I write here, so that the people I love can read it and put their arms around me, keep me safe.

It's a recurring trend, I think, that I fall out with people who don't understand me - and seeing as a lot of people don't understand me my relationships have an alarmingly high failure rate. And, surprisingly, it's not the perfect power balances that work, either - one of my dearest friends and I, we're like a tornado hits a volcano; we fight all the time, we disagree on pretty much everything, but there is this unshakable knowledge that we will always be there for each other and when people are jealous of him, jealous of us, try to blame my pushing them away and my inexcusable heartlessness on him, I know that the only difference between the people I love and the people I have left to drown is a world of difference - understanding, respect. I never assume things about people because I don't understand people at all and I've had a lot of practice in accepting defeat and acknowledging everything I think I know about anyone is wrong. And the people who really want to get to know me...learn not to assume anything, either.

It's quite disheartening to realise that love isn't about the subtleties, all the words that can be exchanged with a minute gesture, all the love and meaning when you hold someone's gaze for just a little too long. People make it blatantly clear what they want and it's thrilling but sort of terrifying as well as you fumble your way through unchartered territory. Love is about communication - painful, violent, awkward communication - and people in love just don't take the fucking hint...I'm not used to having to push people away and I guess I'm being too nice; maybe it's kinder to be a bitch from the beginning but at the same time I'm sad, and also terrified, that one must be so unbelievably assertive to the point of aggression when you're playing the ruthless game of love and...when you're someone like me it's hard to be assertive or aggressive because nobody takes you seriously, and that I think is the scariest part of all. Everyone makes assumptions, that I like this, that I enjoy that, that 'she does really like me, she's just shy' NO. I am shy, but when I am in love, so in love, my arms will reach out to you of their own volition because even though I'm petrified of the proximity I'm even more terrified of losing you.

Vacancy: BF.

There are two letters written on the back of my shirt that I wore on the last day of school. It's a B and an F written almost illegibly between my shoulders and...I can't remember the person who wrote it. All I know is that we must have been happy together.


Love Musings

Where do we get our ideas about love? Where do we get our ideas about...about anything?

When you're an English student, and when you're interested in social activism, you look a lot at how popular culture influences social mores and I thought it was interesting how music informs our ideas on love and are inspired by these ideas, especially with the rise of artists like Taylor Swift who gain fame not necessarily through selling the most avant garde music, but by presenting uncannily accurate and relateable stories in a musical format.

This poem is comprised of all the references to 'love', 'loved', 'beloved', 'lovely' and 'loving' from my Top 100 and Favourites Playlist.

Busy

So one of my friends has gotten me totally hooked onto spoken word, and this is my kind of interpretation of it. I love it; I've never been exposed to this kind of poetic expression before, and it is exciting to experiment with it. I have said it aloud, in private, and I would love to perform this and others I've been working on. One day, when I find my stage.

A Little Fall of Rain

There was a storm yesterday.

I've always loved storms. In primary school when it rained all the girls would strip their shoes off and let down their hair and run, run in the rain and their shirts would go translucent and cling to newly-minted bodies and every twelve year old boy saw us differently, in the pouring rain and rumbling thunder.

But my loneliest times have also been in storms. There's something incredibly defeating about walking alone in the rain, hunched under an umbrella that does little to protect you from the heavens. I've always defined my moods by the times when I cry under umbrellas or the times I run in the rain.

And all I have ever wanted, really, was for someone to ask if I was good and safe after a storm, even if a little fall of rain can hardly hurt me. Just for someone to care if I was warm and safe and thinking of them.

Emerald Waves

I spent six weeks living in Songdo, an icy little island in a cold grey sea. It had its own kind of charm, and I really did love living there - the people, the atmosphere, all the things to see and do, the party hard and cry all the way home lifestyle.

I fell in love in Songdo. I don't really know if you could call it that, but...when you go somewhere so different from home, meet a boy so different from the boys at home, there's always going to be that kind of instant look before you leap attraction. Songdo was my escape, from sixteen years of false assumptions and bad reputations - a place where I thought I could begin again. But you can forget your past for a little while, try something innocent with someone who is so innocent, but you can't leave yourself behind. I was too much myself, and if anything is a comfort to me, it is that - I was myself, from the beginning, and I did my best.

And you forget, when you have met someone so new, so different, that there's only so much variety in the world - boys are all the same. They break hearts in the exact same way, no matter where they're from or what they do or what language they speak or what they look like. Boys are perfectly capable of forgetting you, of leaving without saying goodbye. Of all the things, that hurt me the most. He left without saying goodbye.

I went to the beach last weekend, to Lancelin up north - it's one of my favourite haunts. I'm not exactly an Olympic swimmer but I do love the beach - the panorama scenery, the smell, the feel of salty sandy sea breeze, the wide expanse of dunes, the cool bubbly shallows. The waves were a beautiful emerald colour, just as I remembered them to be even after weeks of staring at choppy grey sea. I've always found the beach comforting in its constancy. Empires rise and fall, hearts break and heal and fall again, but some things remain eternal. It's very humbling and healing.

It's strange to think that my beloved emerald waves back at home and the half-frozen sea surrounding Songdo is one and the same - and the boy I left behind and I look at the same ocean every day. For the first time in my life I feel vulnerable - I don't want to fall in love again. I'm tired of the disappointment, tired of the hurt, tired of the same story that plays over and over again in different places with different boys but with always the same ending. For the first time I don't have the strength and the motivation to jump back in head first, fearless - for the first time I'm afraid of those bubbly butterfly feelings and everything they have ever meant to me. This is not how I wanted to start this new chapter in life, but I can't do it anymore. I'm not the carefree fifteen year old or the reckless sixteen year old I once was. I'm seventeen and hurt - hurt by fairytales gone wrong, worn out by fighting for happy endings that never come. I left my love behind somewhere in the waves, buried in the dunes...and there it will stay, for now. Because if no-one can touch me, no-one can hurt me. And that will do, for now.

Because he left without saying goodbye, and somehow I can't let that go.

Unspoken

There are some relationships that aren't easy. Every day is a struggle to keep things going, to keep things the way you need them to be, to make sure that you're always there for someone and they're always there for you. And there are times when everyone on the outside looking in is wondering why we try, and sometimes you wonder that, too. And there are times when giving up is even harder than going on. And there are times when you're happy and sad all at once, lonely and suffocated at the same time by the same person.

And there are some people who you say so much to. If everything is hard then the one thing that is easy is talking - there's just so much to say, and so there's so much they know about you, so much they understand better than anyone else. But that's a vulnerability, isn't it? Someone who knows all your secrets, knows how you work, your modus operandi, your strengths, your flaws...they could destroy you, so easily, without even thinking about it.

I've always found, with my closest friends, it is not the little quirks that drive us apart. It's not the things that defy social norms, the little things in us that refuse to conform. It's all the misunderstandings and false assumptions that come when nobody is and ever will be on the same page as you, and as you get closer these things drive you further apart. It's all the things that are unspoken, for one reason or another. The things that I am too afraid to say, the things I think I could say if I were truly fearless.

Shattered Beautiful Tragic

I love Shattered by Trading Yesterday and Sad Beautiful Tragic by Taylor Swift because the songwriting is exquisite. I'm ashamed to say the best lines of these poems come from one of these two songs.

I started university today and it couldn't have been better timing. It's a whole new world out there, a whole new world without my most recent heartbreaker. I thought you were beautiful, but there's a beautiful world out there without you.

I'm fascinated by the concept of breaking breaks. When sometimes you heal all wrong and you have to start over. That hurts that come so fast after healing aren't always a bad thing. I think this is the first time I've written of the hope that is always in the aftermath of each heartbreak. The sun also rises.

Alawi

The last poem about the person who inspired You & I, Smiles and حَرَام. I guess you can figure out what happened.

Now you're just somebody that I used to know.

حَرَام

So I'm not going to write about Smiles because...it's too personal. There's something so innocent about the person who inspired that poem, and my feelings towards them, and I want to try and protect that.  

حَرَام, or 'haraam', is an Arabic term meaning forbidden, and is used in Islam to refer to things that anger or displeases Allah. 

Living in a relatively secular country I never really put that much thought into how my personal beliefs would effect my relationships, my feelings for other people. Atheism to me had always been such exquisite freedom, represented liberty and choice, it is strange that my lack of religion is putting confines onto how I should think and feel. 

Here people think that I'm very innocent and naive, and in some ways they are right - I'm a little child in red lipstick constantly scrabbling to catch up with the grown ups. But in other ways I've past the point of no return - innocence once lost is lost forever. I refuse to think of that as a bad thing, because losing innocence is part and parcel with shedding ignorance and acquiring knowledge, two things that are vital to becoming a decent human being. But I know that has made me haraam, at least to some people. Untouchable. And I'm not entirely sure if that is because I have sunk far below them or risen far above them. I guess we will never know.

To me butterflies represent the freedom of innocence - a short lived, forgotten innocence, but a sweet and beautiful time nonetheless. After everything I've done last year, after everything I've been through, I thought I had kissed my childhood goodbye a long time ago - but here, amongst people who don't know much about me at all, I am still very much a baby. And so, I wear butterflies in my hair again, and hope they will not be disappointed if and when they realize that I am not all that I seem. 

I love how white can be all at once soft, sweet, pure, sparkling, harsh, cold, hostile, blank, ghastly...anything. It's a blank slate but heavy with symbolism and implication. It's also something of a bad anology for anything related to humans or life - we are never truly white, never truly clean or pure, never truly able to turn a new leaf and begin again on a clean slate. 

But all things said and done, I am glad that I share the sky with some people, even if things are lost in translation and who I am keeps us worlds apart. 

Comrades

I know all you Les Mis fans are probably wondering who the hell Marianne is - Marianne is the personification of France, specifically symbolizing the 'egality, liberty and fraternity' of the French Revolution.

I just watched Les Mis and I absolutely loved it. I watched a bit of a non-musical version a long time ago but this is the first time I've seen the musical in all it's sumptuous sung-through glory. But beyond the beautiful music I really loved the story and characterisation of Les Mis - I was struck by how, as in all great works of literature, these characters can live in a time and place so far removed from our own and yet you can still see your own life echoed in them.

The character that really resonated with me was Eponine. I know what it is to be that girl watching on as another lives out her dreams. I know what it is to want to take a bullet for someone who can only offer a charade of love. Marius gives her her mushy goodbye, alright, but six seconds later Eponine is out of his mind, replacing a diamond in the rough with a pretty trinket. Eponine is the girl who had to, and could, fight alongside men, someone who fought her own battles and solved her own problems. Those are the women I admire, that history admires - the comrades, not prizes, of men. And yet, the women who are the heroes and martyrs and comrades of men never get their happy ending. Fairytale Princess and Faithful Sidekick are never one and the same character.

When I was younger, back in the days of princesses and pirate ships, I dreamed a dream hat I would get my fairytale ending after the battle that is growing up. But I made my own decision to be a player in these games, to fight my own battles, to make sure I get my own entry in the history books. And now, I can only hope that there is someone out there willing to fall for a comrade in the barricades rather than a princess in the tower. Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc may be my heroes, but don't make a virgin martyr out of me.

You & I

Have you ever met someone who seems like an open door to something new, but at the same time you can see the end - a messy end? Have you ever met someone that you're too scared to get to know, because there's too much between you two, you're so different that you never know whether the other will take everything you do as a an honour or an insult? Those connections that are so fluid and flawless and yet so jarring and bizarre. The stories that are too good to be true, and so they never will be, so you don't try. You don't try and write the story that never gets told. But you know that person knows, too. In another time and place, if things weren't the way things were...anything could have happened.

Being a second generation Asian Australian, culture clash is nothing new. But it is very hard having culture clashes with your parents, with all your friends, with every boy that you've ever loved. It's especially hard for someone like me to live with the feeling that nobody truly understands you, because the things that make me, me and the things that make you, you are so irrevocably and irreparably different and conflicting and unyielding. It throws your very being into a state of constant chaos and I...all I want is to find a state of grace for you and I.

바다

바다 means 'sea' in Korean, and has a special significance to the Koreans given that Korea is a penninsula, one of the crowning achievements of the Korean civilization is the invention of the turtle ship and, of course, their great love of seafood. Before we came to uni we went on a road trip to a little seaside village where we stayed right by the sea - a bay of shimmering indigo water surrounded by snow-covered mountains. My attitude towards Korea is the same as my attitude towards the sea - they're both beautiful, magical, fascinating places that never cease to fill me with awe, and yet I am also wary, terrified, weirded out by them.

All fears are simply the fear of the unknown - I'm still scared of the dark but I know it's not the absence of light that I am afraid of, but whatever might be hiding in the said absence of light. The sea doesn't frighten me nearly as much as the land because to me the sea is such a whole and natural place. It has that kind of ferocious wild beauty that is so dangerous and volatile and yet it provokes more awe than terror. I know, should anything happen to me in the sea, it is simply nature taking its course, and I have always found comfort in finding my place in the many harmonious cycles of life and time. If anything should happen here, in the sordid cities and amongst the hushed secrets of quiet country towns, it will be something jarringly unnatural, something that was not meant to happen, something that wasn't greater forces of life and death but just the disproportionate power of one man, one vendetta, one thought. That scares me more, how life and death is almost wasted in this time and place where we have replaced God or Mother Nature as the dealer of fate. It's something I feel like I must protect myself from. And so, I have left my soul in the one place I know it will be safe - the most dangerous place on earth.

S.

I'm not even going to try and explain this one. Sometimes words just spill out of my pen like tears.

bird tracks in the snow

Sometimes I feel like the song 'Landscape' was written about me.

Here in Incheon...it's interesting, to say the least. Life here, in the dorms, in uni, is nothing like life back at home in Perth. It's barren and frozen but suffocatingly full of people, all at once - it's the kind of place where you can feel lonely and desperate for solitude all at once. It's an interesting feeling.

The motto for Yonsei is 'Yonsei, where we make history. I love the motto and everything it means, but somehow I feel like finding my name in the history books is easier said than done. And I know, when all is said and done, the things that I treasure the most are moments nobody remembers but me, the people nobody knows of but me, the little things that everyone else overlooks. Because, really, when you're me, there's nothing more precious than bird tracks and paw prints in the snow.

산

This is probably my most personal poem to date, in that it means the most to me. I've been dying to share this with you.

산 (san) means 'mountain' in Korean. The Korean Peninsula is approximately 70% mountains, so everywhere you look there are mountains - most cities are built in valleys, and I always like to think of the mountains as ancient grandmothers watching on silently as Korea continues to evolve and modernize. Mountains have a special significance to the Koreans. They are a place of sanctuary from a hectic and often ruthless society. The mountains have a magical allure to me...I don't know how to explain it. They feel like home. When I am tired and frustrated and lonely, I am comforted by the mountains, by their steady presence. There's something comforting about something so unchanging when I am so volatile. 

The mountains are also traditional graveyards. There are cemetaries here, of course, but a lot of people are still buried in the traditional way - a large area is cleared on the mountain and the body is buried in a wooden coffin under a mound of earth. I don't know if you've seen a traditional Korean grave, but they're very beautiful - Western cemetaries always creep me out, but there's a graceful serenity about the place where my great-grandparents have been laid to rest. Because our family is still pretty august and traditional, I expect that most of my Korean relatives will be buried in the same way. 

But I won't be. Even though the mountains feel like home, I know I will never return there, after this long and weary day that we call life. I'm not like my Korean relatives, who are at peace with where they were born, content with life as they know it. I'm a wanderer, like my mother. Only wandering will rock my restless soul to sleep. I want to die as I want to live - free.  

Holy Ground

I love Subiaco. So many memories. Missing West Leederville and running to school from Subiaco train station. The markets that are now pretty much closed down - I bought my first pair of earrings there. Wandering around the cafes and shops during gym, buying iced coffee and Boost from money begged off friends. The second hand bookstore. The sunlight through the trees in the late afternoon in Subiaco isn't like anything I've seen anywhere else. San Churros. Ice cream with my sister. The best teriyaki you will ever have. My first kiss. Subiaco is my Holy Ground, because so many weird and wonderful things happened there. I can't walk through it without having flashbacks.

Sometimes I feel like the past is out there to make you weak, to forget about how things are in the here and now. But I can't let go of what has happened. I remember everything - the good, the bad, the ugly. In lit, my pet subject, we learn that nothing happens in a vacuum - everything in the present is informed by the past. My life feels a bit like that, now. Begin again doesn't mean forgive and forget. It means remember. Remember what you've been through, remember what you've overcome, remember what you had, remember what you lost. Remember the beautiful things that made you float on cloud nine and the cruel things that made you hit the concrete and a million miles an hour.

I know people think that I'm weak because I forgive easily, or I seem to forget all the cruel things countless people have done to me. I haven't forgotten, and I probably haven't forgiven. I'm just a very good liar.

a world away

I've been mulling over this poem for days. The first line that came to me was 'I dream of dreamless sleep', and that was it. I was stuck on that for a few days. And then I teased out the 'loving feels like hating/winning feels like losing/holding tight feels like letting go'. And then the rest followed.

In some ways this was inspired by some Taylor Swift songs off of her new album, Red - 'I Almost Do', 'Sad Beautiful Tragic', and 'All Too Well'. But mostly...I've been struggling a little with a strange kind of insomnia, lately. If I don't stay up late enough so I basically get knocked unconscious the second my head hits a pillow, if I go to bed and have a few moments of waking, I'm totally overcome by this wave of unexplained emotion and sadness. It happens a lot when I'm stressed, and there's often no rhyme or reason to it. Which is why I dream of dreamless sleep.

The Papaver Cadaver

Firstly: Papaver is another word for poppy, and a cadaver is a corpse. Pretty gruesome for something that just rolls off the tongue, huh? Papaver Cadaver.

I've always been fascinated by poppies. Syrup of poppies is a crude form of opium used by the Ancient Romans - poppies are still used in modern medicine, as I found out the hard way (all night blistering headache from allergic reaction to morphine). And then there is the whole remembrance thing and how the white poppies turned red and war and all of that.

My belated Remembrance Day poem.

Abraham's Daughter

Abraham's Daughter is a song off the soundtrack of The Hunger Games (which I haven't watched. Or read. Get off my back.) It is a twist off the Biblical story of Abraham being ordered by God (my shift button jams every time I try and type 'God'. Oh, the irony) to sacrifice his son Isaac, before being told at the last minute by angels to sacrifice a ram instead. In the song, it is suggested that Abraham has a daughter who has no name - 'My father never gave me one' - who is 'raised for the slaughter', and is killed in the place of her brother when she defies God by trying to interfere with the sacrifice.

Loooots of baggage, huh?

The idea I was trying to convey was the suppression of women in patriarchy, and the inherent sexism in a society that consciously, subconsciously and/or unconsciously believes that men are better than women. Even in this day and age you hear of women denied education and the chance of a better life so that a family can pour their resources into their male children - women stay at home and help to run the household whilst men are given everything they need to go chase their dreams. You hear stories of girls sold into sex slavery or forced marriages for financial gain, of honour killings and the right of fathers to have the power of life and death over their daughters. It happens, in the here and now, and it is ignored by people who try and say that feminism is irrelevant.

I thought it was interesting that the song was called Abraham's Daughter - not just because of the Biblical thing, but because the song can be read as a treatment of all of 'Abraham's daughters' - women living in patriarchal societies, which we all are. Abrahamic religions are the core of modern day patriarchy, and all the tolerance and liberalization in the world cannot remove the deeply misogynistic nature of the texts and the ideology and the theology that governs Abrahamic religions. This is what happens when the major religions of the world were intensely sexist and remain intrinsically misogynistic and sex negative.

the silence of numbers

It is impossible to describe the frustration of being an artist constantly judged by my limited ability to play with numbers. It is impossible to describe the frustration of being a human being with a name reduced to a number.

I'm numlexic - numbers mean nothing to me. Less than nothing. To me, it's like reading a foreign language - I have to concentrate very hard to make sense of it and it's beyond meaningless to me. Numbers mean so little to me that I have been known to be over the moon with a 70% and burst into tears at a 68% because it takes me a little while to realize that there's only 2% difference. When I was little and forced to do maths I would often solve things in a very roundabout way - using pictures or words instead of actually memorizing the damn formulas - and even though I studied music for ten years and was considered quite musical I always found it especially hard to read music. Numlexia, also known as dyscalculia, is basically dyslexia but with numbers - but guess which one is widely accepted? I'm tired of being judged and disadvantaged. I'm not dumb, I'm different. Intelligence is not something that is determined through numbers or by numbers.

Our educational system places such an undue emphasis on mathematical and scientific disciplines that students who don't have specific talents in this area are unfairly disadvantaged not only through social attitudes but through scaling and moderation which puts the 'national priority' on a pedestal and ignores the merits of the arts, humanities and social sciences. I have worked so hard these past four years to get to where I am now, but my victories seem a little hollow. I'm not on the same level as the other top students.

I look at all my essays, my blog posts, my diaries, the things that make me who I am - I couldn't make anything more meaningful with numbers, nobody can. Numbers are cold and heartless. It is hard and heartbreaking to see all my effort, my love, my hate, my passion, reduced to a number. And it is harder still to watch these numbers be twisted by bureaucrats who don't have my talents and so dismiss me entirely. I'm not sorry that I am not one of the many. I am sorry that you try and make me to be one. I am not a number.

Best Friends.

Yes, I am actually talking about the same person in all four poems. This is the first time I've played with this kind of structure and is inspired by T.S. Eliot's Preludes.

Part I is just all the little things that I hold very dear to me - the little things that makes life and love and friends precious. They are the things that people don't always see, and the things that people take for granted. They are all the things I wanted to say when people accused me of being a groupie or said that he wasn't in it as much as I was. They are the things I think of when I am sad and lonely and tired. They are the things that keep me going. They are the things that make everything worth it. They are the things I was missing in fifteen years of not having a best friend. They are all the things I say when I say that he is my best friend.

Part II is...when things go bad. The lows after all the highs. Feeling silenced and voiceless and alone. Not being able to look into someone's eyes and see the comfort of perfect understanding. Miscommunications and misunderstandings. Having so many things to say and not being able to say them. Swallowing pride and putting on a brave face. Forgiving and forgetting too easily and too soon. Not having choices or options or the strength to say no. Realizing that it's not us and them because you're one of them, too. Feeling like all the weight and energy and complications of a friendship are all on you. That's the part I hate - being taken for granted.

This was the first year that words have truly failed me. When I have sat down to write things in my diary, on my blog, or just even in my mind, but the words didn't come. Even though the lows are crushingly low the highs - the highs are exhilarating, and I'm more than just a little addicted to the rush. Words couldn't explain the euphoria. When being indebted to someone isn't a burden, but sets you free. I have been free to be fearless this year, and it is beautiful, flawless, fearless. And I am so blessed, thankful, grateful. Truly. I love you to the moon and back and Stay Beautiful have become...trademarks of sorts. But I mean them every time I say them.

I actually wrote Part IV first, then realized that it was only one dimension of everything and spent the rest of the night (I wrote it straight after a dinner dance) turning my model and drawing it from every angle. I was tired of feeling like every moment I spend with someone is a moment borrowed or stolen from someone else, and every precious memory is not really mine to keep. It's difficult when you don't know where you stand and the tables are constantly turning. I don't like dwelling on what could be or what might have been and all the countless missed opportunities. I don't like the idea that I'm missing out. But the part that scares me is the goodbyes - I hate the thought of losing the good if I let go of the bad.

Incidentally, this poem is not chronological at all, but interestingly the songs that inspired them are. Stay Beautiful is part of Taylor Swift's first eponymous album, You're Not Sorry is from Fearless, Long Live is from Speak Now and Girl at Home is from Red. Other songs referenced are Ronan, Red, Sad Beautiful Tragic, Treacherous, State of Grace and Fearless.

Rabbit Heart 

...I don't know if it's possible to stuff any more animals into a poem.

It's strange how strength and vulnerability take many forms, and you never really lose either of them - they just change. I was a lion hearted kitten, and now I am a rabbit hearted girl.

A rabbit's foot is a good luck charm, but as they say, 'depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit'

The rabbit is a symbol of innocence, playfulness and sexuality - cognitive dissonance, much? I thought it was a cute anology. Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) was inspired by Florence Welch's natural shyness and her fear of being in the spotlight after Florence + the Machine shot to fame.

A kit is a baby rabbit when it is still a fairly alien-looking, hairless, jellybean thing. Everyone says that they are so weak and helpless and vulnerable, but somehow I think that a grown rabbit is even more vulnerable, because they have something of value - the pelt.

The black-backed jackal is one of the very few animals that are monogamous - mandarin ducks are also monogamous and are used in Asia as symbols for a happy marriage. The Dauphin and Dauphine are the French equivalents of the Prince and Princess of Wales and literally translates to 'dolphin' - because only the French would think that calling someone a dolphin is a compliment.

Inferno

'Old flame, you're still the one that holds me, can you feel it burning? Old flame, I fell for your inferno, where did all the love go? Can't you feel the wind blow?'

I've always found it interesting that people use words like 'headstrong' or 'irresponsible' or 'she was asking for it' when it comes to love and other animals. I might be weak, but I know how young I am. I know all too well now the vulnerability of being innocent and naive. I know it all goes over your head, at least for the first time.

The fire and water of love is interesting. Sometimes it's a warm glow or a comforting light in the darkness, other times it's an all-consuming inferno. I've spent so long playing idly with wet matches that when I accidentally sparked an inferno I was utterly mesmerised - and terrified. Water couldn't explain the burning.

And yet I was content. Note the past tense. But there's always emptiness in the drought, especially after a flood. And either way the tears don't stop falling.

When I spoke about my fear of innocence and how I thought of my innocence as a liability, a vulnerability, I was eager to grow up a little bit, to change colour. I thought nothing could be worse than the raging curiosity - the anticipation was killing me. But I was wrong. There is something worse. The longing after loving all the wrong things. That's worse.

Inspired by Old Flame by Kimbra and What the Water Gave Me and Never Let Me Go by Florence + The Machine

inoculation

Inoculation is the deliberate exposure to a particular disease or infection to gain immunity.

volatile. 

Humans by nature are volatile.

We have the unique capability for emotional spectrum and to express this in a diversity of ways. Not all ways are productive or healthy, but all of them are natural. We hate violently and we love passionately. In the short space of a minute, an hour, a day, a lifetime, the pendulum swings from deliriously happy to bewilderingly sad. Stability is the antithesis of human nature, yet it is something societies has always prized - but it is an unachievable ambition that achieves nothing but monotony and the dismissal of human nature. I mean, the Doctrine of the Mean? Why the hell would you want to be the mean?

Volatility is not something that is exactly celebrated in this day and age. The ability to love passionately is always under appreciated and the consequences of violent hate are always underestimated. We are expected to be emotionless and this in itself gets emotions running high.

I know I am rather volatile. The reason why I don't have many close friends is because the closer I let people get to me the more they can hurt me...and the closer you are the easier it is to provoke. I'm tired and stressed and upset and angry and I know I'm taking it out on people more than is probably fair. But on the other hand, I haven't forgiven anyone yet. I'm just sorry of overreacting and I'm tired of being angry at people.

Withdraw

It's hard to explain to people the history of concubinage in Joseon Korea.

The kings of Joseon were polygamous - some had up to twenty wives at a time. Of these wives, the first was given the title of wang-bi (translated into 'Royal Queen') and had the political office of queen (chung-jeon). Posthumously they were honoured as empresses (wang-hu).

A king could take any unmarried woman as a consort - either someone he chooses personally, or chosen by the queen (cognitive dissonance, much? But yes, the first wife had a large say in choosing the subsequent wives of her own husband) and the queen dowager (tae-bi 'Great Queen'). But mostly consorts were chosen by an official process from the noble yang-ban families - one of which my family used to be. It became customary for a woman to become a de facto wife until she is officially inducted into the royal family, and is given the title of sang-gung (equivalent to Lady). A sang-gung was a high court official and wore silver foil stamps on her gowns to signify that she was in a public relationship with the king, and was normally inducted into the royal family once she fell pregnant. The silver foil (enbak) is very symbolic because it distinguishes a woman from the other sang-gung, who are just normal court ladies, and was a symbol of the king's favour and being accepted by the royal family. Once they were accepted into the royal family they were full wives, had the same status as princesses and their word was law - they wielded enormous power, especially if they were the mother of the Crown Prince (sae-ja) The queen and some of the higher consorts also wore gold foil stamps on their gowns (geumbak).

I've always been fascinated with the lives of the consorts of kings. The queens and consorts of the kings of Joseon are my ancestors but they are all but forgotten in orthodox history. In popular culture K-Dramas have endless tropes surrounding them - the humble peasant girl who rises to righteous power and the evil scheming concubine who dies in some gruesome way eventually. But for all the beautiful gowns and endless politics and deadly scheming, a consort is utterly dependent on their husbands and their sons for survival. Their power is as ephemeral as a pumpkin coach - it is given by others and can be taken away by the same. They are not princesses of blood but princesses of politics, princesses of seduction, princesses who must earn their keep just like any other woman in the realm that they do not really rule. Some are forgotten, discarded, deposed. A king's favour is as changeable as the wind, ever dependent on mood and luck. Sometimes an ambitious consort's schemes can hurt the king and the royal family and other consorts perish in their attempt to protect an oblivious outsider to the Inner Court - the 'queen's province, where lives are lost at whim'. But once you're in there's no way out - you can't withdraw your heart.

Mon Ami.

Mon Ami (my friend) is inspired by...well, a friend. And all the things I would do for him.

heartstrings (science & art)

Inspiration? I'll never tell :P

Is love a science or an art? What is the relationship between artist and muse? Who has more power, the possessor or the possession?

These questions...have been spinning around the heads and hearts of people like me for centuries.

arsenic heartfires

I wish you could have seen the creative process of this - draft after draft after draft, and then when I finally uploaded it several re-edits. This was a true labour of love.

I've always been fascinated with arsenic - when I was little I read this book series called The Dragonkeeper Trilogy and the dragons used arsenic as a tonic. And yet in another time and place arsenic was the poison of choice for murderers in Victorian England. Love is a little like that - tonic and toxin, all at once; what nourishes me destroys me. The main reason why I like Bronte over Austen is because Austen presents a Photoshopped version of love - romantic, yes, but not the violent, passionate, sordid intensity of, say, Cathy and Heathcliff. It's why I've never really been interested in the idle locker chat and silly pettiness of all the 'relationships' in the schoolyard, where going out is more a status symbol than a declaration of love. It's a cheap imitation of the real thing.

I never got my highschool romance. Now that I've grown up I'm not entirely sure if that's a good or bad thing - I'm just a little disappointed that I missed out, because memories are memories and experience are experiences even if they aren't paradise. But, unfortunately for all my primary school bullies who used to swear I'd die an old maid, I haven't exactly grown up to be a one-eyed troll. I have gotten some attention...but as usual with me, everything was sudden and unexpected and weird and intense and scary and confusing and...strangely euphoric.

Love and lust is meant to be something big and monumental. I mean, civilizations rose and empires fell on the whims of men, on the schemes of women, of the rush of a kiss, a taste, a touch. I want to have that, I want to feel that, that force of unstoppable human will that wrote the history books in blood and tears.

As an atheist and a humanist, I think that human nature is beautiful - that desires should be celebrated rather than suppressed under the dogma of religion and morality and societal convention. Love, to me, has always seemed a little sacrilegious, a little immoral, a little dangerous - and it's thrilling. There's nothing purer than brutal desire, and no higher calling than falling in love. I've always believed that.

I've always wanted to write a poem about love without the word 'love' in it - because, after all, what do I know of love? What do I know of men? I know that men can make the greatest friends, that men can be the people who look out for you. I know that men can be completely ruled by desire and impulse and physical attraction and it doesn't take that much to make that happen, but when it does, even subconsciously, it can destroy you if you let it go over your head.

It has always been hard, being the kind of person where so many things mean so much to me, and knowing that very little means anything to anyone at all these days - I know I do not mean much to many. But I like to think that, at least for just one or two people, I have just a little piece of their heart. I'm greedy enough to want that, and selfish enough to hope that I'm right.

Mermaid

I've always been fascinated with Disney Princesses. It's what we've grown up with - but now I've grown up and acquired brain cells I hate it. I hate it. I hate all the stupid things these spunky, independent girls had to do to get a man. Prince or no Prince - it's just so stupid!

The Little Mermaid is a prime example. In the original tale, she not only sacrifices her life at sea and her voice, every step she takes is as if walking on knives - and yet she never cries, and she even dances for this stupid-ass Prince. The robbing of her ability to speak is profound symbolism - it strips her of so much power (goddess to eunuch). Everything that made the mermaid powerful and sexual and beautiful is robbed from her - and that's what men are accustomed to, now, through the media - not women, but eunuchs, people deprived of expression. But the prince - the prince is blind. He can't speak, he can see, he can't hear. You can't love someone you can't see through. The way he treats her, it is as if they were all underwater - it is really him who is deprived, deprived of the things that make us human, deprived of the things that allow us to love. But when you love a woman, you have the choice between shattered glass - destroyed illusions - or sea foam - someone so insubstantial they are almost nothing, merely a voiceless product of the tides of society.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you hide so much from the people you love. To protect them, so they don't think too badly of you, so they aren't repulsed by all the failings of humanity. But the people we love...when they can't see you, can't feel you, can't touch and taste and breathe and know you...they don't love you.

Inspired by The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen and the Disney rip-off, Never Let Me Go and What the Water Gave Me by Florence and The Machine and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.

Breathe.

I'd never had a panic attack until two nights ago, when the smallest thing after a lifetime of 'smallest things' just pushed me over the edge. I couldn't take it. I'd had enough. I never wanted to see anyone or do anything ever again. You can't breathe, you can't speak, you can't do anything.

But then there is no end. It seems to me that any other person can do the tiniest thing to you and you can completely destroy them in the name of revenge, and yet some person by some random glitch of chance is virtually untouchable.

There was a psychological experiment done in which babies were fed, bathed, changed and looked after just as well as any other baby, but were totally deprived of eye contact or social interaction or physical contact. Their carers showed them no tenderness or affection. Although all the babies were healthy, every single one of them died. They died of starvation. Emotional starvation.

I don't have a problem with natural justice. With punishment, cause and effect, imposed karma. I won't contest it if I deserve it. I've never had a problem with people telling me to not do this or do that, but it's the way that they do it that has completely broken me down. Don't shout at me. Don't ever fucking shout at me! Especially when you haven't got all the facts, when you make assumptions and jump to conclusions.

Nobody is more aware of my shortcomings than I. But I do try, and nobody appreciates that. They don't understand that I don't see things, I simply can't do things, that sometimes it takes me much more effort to do something other people don't even need to think about. They don't understand that my faults aren't deliberate, that I don't deliberately go out of my way to annoy people, and that I'll always try and fix things. We're all like that. I can pass English with my eyes closed, but some people can't master the language after more than half a lifetime trying to learn it. For all my impatience, I am always forgiving of human nature. I can't say that about some people.

Silence

You might have gathered that I'm an annoying, talkative little shit.

True story.

Words are my balm. I write and I talk and I read to heal, to grow, to learn. Communication is something that I value above anything else, and I cannot stand misunderstandings or lack of clarity. I don't understand people who don't talk. I just don't understand them. If I don't talk, I explode.

Another thing I can't stand about people is when they take everything that is wrong with someone, every fault in the world, as a personal insult. Like I've deliberately done something to hurt them, or to offend them. They don't consider for a second that I don't see the world like they do, that I don't deliberately do things or not do things, or that if I walk past and don't see something's out of place it's not because I'm inviting trouble, it's because I genuinely don't see things like that. If something's pissing me off, the only thing to do is to make your sentiments known. Again, talk. If you bottle it all up and then blow things out of proportion...there's just a middle ground between macabre silence and losing control.

I've grown up in an individualistic society. At school, nobody gives a shit if your locker is empty or looks like you've tested a small nuclear bomb in it. At school, nobody gives a shit if you actually study during study periods, or if you daydream. Nobody gives a shit. I like it. I hate people asking me what I'm doing, telling me off for not doing the 'right' thing, making assumptions and jumping to conclusions. My fucking life, people. My fucking way.

All my life, things have been solved by talking. By mediation. But when you can't talk to someone, when there's nothing but silence...nothing changes - there's no truce, no surrender, only detente.

Heavy In Your Arms

"I was a heavy heart to carry, my beloved was weighed down, my arms around his neck, my fingers laced to crown. my love has concrete feet, my love's an iron ball wrapped around your ankles over the waterfall"

I've said before that I feel guilty because I know I am not an easy friend to have.

Being close to me...is a mind fuck, I know. Passion and emotion and intensity...some people cannot handle it. And it's deflating really, because to me it shows...weakness. Not physical weakness, but emotional weakness. I can handle it, I can handle being human. But other people can't.

The theme of Heavy In Your Arms by Florence + The Machine is love that doesn't make you fly, doesn't make you divine or virtuous - love that ties you down, makes you a beast of burden - a beast, intoxicated by passion and intensity and emotion and brutal desire. Love that makes you human - it's not a bad thing, but it's a high price to pay. In this day and age, when we are forced to suppress anything and everything we might feel or taste or desire or believe - some people cannot face it when they meet someone that forces them to be human, and therefore vulnerable. And yet...sometimes you cannot resist.

In this winner takes all world, we're not encouraged to be interdependent - We fight to become a tall poppy, and then we fight to take the tall poppies down. But love...love is interdependent. Sometimes we need someone to carry us just part of the way. And I'm an emotionally...heavy sort of person, and I know I weigh people down. But they do call it falling in love, you know.

It's not the things we force ourselves to do that makes us human - it's what we can't help doing. When you know someone is a forbidden fruit but you can't resist a taste, when curiosity and intensity and desire makes you lose control. It's not the things we are forced into that we detest and love the most - it's the things that we have every right and ability to walk away from and yet we...can't. And even when you know you tie someone down, even when you know you are heavy in their arms...we are all too selfish to let it go.

"I was a heavy heart to carry but he never let me down, when he held me in his arms my feet never touched the ground"

If you're a big Flo fan like me, you'll also see elements of Never Let Me Go, Falling, What the Water Gave Me, Drumming Song...actually, everything.

hairpins in your wallet

Inspiration? I honestly just saw a few hairpins tucked carefully in a friend's wallet, and it was just so...sweet.

Yes, I'm mushy like that.

People, and relationships of all kinds, leave a mark. A physical presence in your own little world of what was formerly just me, myself and I. A necklace your friend left behind from a sleepover. The fact that you listen to Taylor Swift and all your essays are typed up in Palatino Linotype 12-point font. The ring your mother gave you and everything it means to you. The memories of a dress, a pair of stockings, your favourite pair of Converse sneakers. Scars between your breasts and across your ribcage, the little dimple where the wires went in. That jolt and rush of memories whenever you walk past something innocent and almost whimsically pedestrian, like a park bench or a particular flight of stairs. It's impossible for me to forget - for better or for worse - because evidence, evidence is always there, little physical reminders of something from the past. You never leave the past behind you.

I've always been fascinated with symbolism, with meanings and connotations associated with everything around us - it's why I'm an English student. Nobody's really understood that, how all these memories and emotions can all come rushing back because of visual cues, physical reminders. I can actually be rendered speechless by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, brought to tears just be catching a glimpse of something that triggers memories.

I'd like to be that kind of presence, one day. I'd like someone to wake up with little reminders of me, of us, of how much that means to him. True, all this stuff makes it hard to let go. But when you live in the moment...it's the hairpins in your wallet that mean everything.

Chasing Shadows

Most people who know me know that I am very, very paranoid.

When I first started taking the bus, I used to constantly look around me. Constant vigilance. I'd always look over my shoulder, double back. I don't really know why. I don't really live in a problem area.

But now, I don't. I just look at the floor. Nobody really knows why.

When I leave, early in the morning or in the late afternoon, the shadows are really long. It used to be pretty scary, when I was little, but now...now I just watch the shadows. There's only ever mine. Sometimes it's hard looking for real people in a world full of shadows.

My friends tell me that I'm 'real' - the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me is that I'm human, and that's okay. It is true that I always value sincerity above anything; I play the game like any woman, and fifty percent of any charm is illusion...but when it gets down to it, around the people I know and love and trust the most, everything for me is real - I feel everything, everything leaves a mark. I bruise easily - physically, and emotionally, and not everybody understands that. I'm not a shadow like the rest of them. You can't touch shadows, you can't pull them down. Sometimes it's vulnerable, being...corporeal.

Memories are for reliving. Memories...you can force someone to keep them a secret, but they're still mine. There are some memories that I don't know how they came about; some memories contradicted by other memories. I remember, being thirteen, absently picking at my lunch, looking at people I knew would never be my friends...and yet, here I am. I found people to love, and I've left people to drown. Growing up...growing up is strange. The most unexpected things happen when you least expect it, almost nothing goes to plan. And yet, it's incredibly lonely, and incredibly strange how some things remain the same. I'm still chasing shadows. But there are some things I'll never forget, some things I remember so vividly and sometimes, when I am tired and lonely...they are strangely comforting. It doesn't matter that they don't mean anything, don't mean anything to anybody...they mean something to me.

Lolita

The outrage surrounding Lolita always fascinated me - I've never read it, but I know the plot and I've watched bits and pieces of the film. To me, it reads just like any other love story, or lust story - like a gay love story, almost, in that they're both unorthodox but okay to me. Is it because we read it as a story with a victim? Is it because we cannot fathom something so young and innocent relishing in the sensual, and so we immediately associate it with guilt and blame? Is it because we cannot imagine being in love with danger, with excitement, with the thrill of being vulnerable or reckless - or, at least, we cannot imagine a woman taking pleasure in those sorts of pleasures?

I guess I will never know.

Either way, Lolita is amazing inspiration fodder.

The little death refers to la petite mort, and if you don't know what that is then I'm far too chicken to tell you. The ram has touched the wall is an Ancient Roman...saying which means 'past the point of no return', and of course, there are Little Red Riding Hood metaphors.

Another thing, I guess, that was on my mind is age of consent...a little. I mean, how can the passing of a few months make something that was once illegal...legal? What's the difference between a newly minted sixteen year old and a bored fifteen year old? Not much. I'm still a baby either way. 

Inspiration: Lolita by The Veronicas

The Forbidden Fruit

I've always been fascinated with the age-old cliche of 'the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest'. Is it true? Who knows?

They say that the fear of the unknown is the root of all fears, and that fear is the basis of all hatred. Fear of knowledge...it's a plague of society. We're afraid of knowing too much, we place such a high value on innocence that it becomes ignorance. I know I was bullied because, deep down, people were afraid of me. They didn't understand me. It's only the people who have bothered to take the time to get to know me that have truly loved me.

But then there's the whole 'forbidden' idea. We're all teenagers; we've all done things that are mildly morally questionable, things that better people, more honourable people, would have ceased and desisted. It's why children are so conservative; they don't know what it's like, to be caught in the heat of the moment, when your heart rules your head and all sense of logic or conscience is temporarily abandoned. 

All This and Heaven Too

'Because I love who I cannot love, I cannot love any other'

It's something that's been haunting me for a long time; being attached, too much, to an idea, an impossibility, far too much to let go. But I love how things ebb and flow, how solutions present themselves all in good time, I've learned to live with the highs and the lows. The longing; I don't miss it. There's nothing more exhausting or draining or defeating or heartbreaking as wanting something you can't have. 

Ever since hormones kicked in and my heart began to misbehave wildly I'd always been held back by an insecurity, a dreadful fear that I would live and die in discontent. I'd seen better women than I fail to rise to the occasion and I couldn't bear the thought of failing, the thought of something that couldn't be gained no matter how hard I tried. It seemed that way, for a long time; striking wet matches and praying for a fire.

For all those who really wanted to know why I broke down so spectacularly when I was thirteen, it was because someone I thought I knew had seemingly confirmed my worst suspicions. It wasn't the boy, it wasn't even the disappointment; it was the thought that I had had everything but I was somehow unworthy of all this and heaven, too. I thought I wasn't good enough, never good enough, and I was worn down and exhausted from tiptoeing on eggshells and biting my tongue. I just wanted someone to look me in the eye and forgive me for being human. 

If there's anything a friend has given me, it's faith. I guess I should thank you for robbing me of my insecurities. I swore I would live without regrets, and you are part of that, and I am glad. If I had to give a piece of my heart for peace of mind, then so be it. If this is a strange and sordid way to set things in motion, to kiss goodbye my childhood, then so be it. I wouldn't have it any other way.

The colour thing (a drop of blood in a bowl of milk being a Time Traveller's Wife reference) is also a reference to 부용화 and Invocation (I will never again be as white as white can be) 

It's been a long time since I've had that kind of anticipation, that genuine excitement for the unknown. For a long time I fought too hard for security, for a plan, for something solid and corporeal, something I could take in my hands and touch, taste, something secure for the future. I've never had that luxury, and I've always been quite bitter for it. But if that's my lot in life - to never know what's happening next - then, well, why the hell not? I'll just go with the flow. Security can be a safety net, but it can also be a cage; and you know me, I like freefall. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and although I have no idea what's in store for me I know that even though I might have to lose a few fights and cry a few tears, I will find all this and heaven, too.

And so I agree with you, my friend. I'm moving on to something better, too. The rest of my life.

(and yes I did do some study before all this emotional indulgence ;P)

부용화

부용화 (Buyonghwa) is a type of hibiscus, also known as a Confederate Rose or Cotton Rosemallow, that are white in the morning, turn pink by noon and are red by evening, staying red for a few days before aborting. It just struck me as a beautiful anology for a woman; and so my poem is also an anology for a woman. Tyrian was the most expensive kind of dye in the ancient world, producing a deep purple or indigo, and was usually reserved for royalty; I've used this with poetic license, because the 부용화 turns red, not purple, but I liked the term and the symbolism of tyrian. A harlot's toga refers to the custom of the Late Republic, in which prostitutes could be easily spotted by their red togas - by the waning days of the SPQR most women had shunned the toga.

I'm also writing this at a weird time - I'm sure lots of us are trying to stay 'white', as it were; I know society certainly has this ridiculous expectation that we must be a 'certain colour', as if we have any control over that. But I'm slowly changing, as slowly and surely and uncontrollably as the sun rises and sets. The connection between blood and colour and sex and flowers and purity etc is...interesting, to say the least. I like the imagery of this poem. 

Atonement.

Cheerfully irreligious though I am, I have read Opening the Door of Your Heart and Other Buddhist Tales of Happiness by Ajahn Brahm, the Buddhist monk who blessed me when I was born (or, well, the Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine, near where I was born). In it I remember he said that if you truly love someone, you don't mind if they don't choose you; if you truly love someone, you will be happy if they are happy with whoever makes them...happy.

It's a difficult concept to grasp in a society of one-upmanship, the high esteem of the individual and the great fear of failure. When you love someone, you're meant to do whatever it takes to make them yours, right?

Apparently not.

What do you gain by chaining someone to you? Nothing. Nobody derives any happiness out of such an arrangement. I am a terribly impatient person, but, as impatient as I am, I know I must wait for something...that just happens. You can plant the seeds but the rest is all up to fate. Fate and faith.

But I do believe that the mark of the highest love is letting someone go. It is humiliating, humbling, crushingly defeating to do that, and it goes against every instinct, but it's the right thing to do. Love is selfish...but you can make it selfless.

Inspired by Opening the Door of Your Heart and Other Buddhist Tales of Happiness by Ajahn Brahm, and maybe a little of Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot.

The Martyr

You know in all those movies and breakup anthems, you always walk away from something for yourself, for your own good? Sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes you have to do it for other people, to make someone you don't even know happy. It's so intensely altruistic and selfless, but there's no joy in it, no reward, becaues nobody really knows the extremes you go to; nobody knows what you put yourself through. And I keep telling everyone I'm okay, I'll be okay, because I don't want anything to stop before it has to. It's already going to burn, so why stop now?

I am amazingly self conscious of pain. I don't know whether it's just growing up or my medical condition, but not a day passes when there isn't a little nip of pain, a little gripe, somewhere deep inside me, but I've learned to let it pass without a sound. Maybe if you're looking very closely you'll see me stumble, or bow my head and close my eyes, or just press my lips together and tighten my grip on something. But not a sound. I don't really know why, but I don't want people to know that, even when I'm talking and laughing with them, sometimes I can be half-delirious with pain.

But any kind of pain, emotional or physical, is just all very exhausting. That's the biggest part of it, for me; it's not the pain itself, or the rage or the sadness. I am just so very tired.  

crow dance.

I wish I could say this is some kind of clever metaphor but...I did actually see a crow dancing yesterday. It was right after the exam, I was sick and cold and exhausted, but then there on the roof the music practice rooms was a crow busting a move like Michael Jackson. It was surreal.

I've always loved crows. I think they're really pretty. And if you watch them carefully...they're a lot like me. They like to play in the rain, dance when they think nobody's watching. They'll stare at you with such glares of anger and passion. 

Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur

Apparently the last words of Marie Antoinette, which I always found wonderfully paradoxical because Marie Antoinette refused to bow down; she was so strong, and we don't give her enough credit. Despite the class differences and the debauchery of the nobility, however wrong and fantastical Marie Antoinette was, she never bowed down.

I've never really understood the point of apologies. I hate people who say sorry too much. Why would you do things in the first place? Is a sorry really going to undo what cannot be undone? No. It's especially irritating when apologies aren't even sincere, when they're just a way to save face; when apologies don't really pose any solutions to any problems: let them eat cake, as it were. Which I know was never actually said by Marie Antoinette. 

처음 

...Apparently my funky fonts don't really like Korean...

There is a very famous scene in Winter Sonata when the main character puts on a record called 처음, or First Time, and talks about how the first experiences of anything in life are the most vivid and beautiful. I love that thrill of meeting someone for the first time, or saying something for the first time, or doing something for the first time. It might not be the best, you might not be brilliant at something or the best friend in the world, it might be the last time you ever see someone or do something, but the first time doing anything is the sweetest.  I remember the first day of school, the first day I meet someone, the first time I try on a new dress or say something I've never said before. I remember the first time I fell in love, the first time a boy smiled at me, the first time someone told me I was pretty, and smart, and the first time my heart broke. I remember stepping off the plane in Korea for the first time. Beautiful memories like that.

I'm not in love. I haven't done anything that would make anyone with a conscience blush, not really. Everything I do or say is tempered by the bitterness of reality. But I love how innocence makes everything seem reckless.

Boundaries

Being an artist, you play a lot with the subjective, the experimental, the abstract - and I love it. I love the thrill of never knowing right or wrong, for simply marvelling at mysteries instead of pulling them apart for the greater good or, worse still, for no good at all. 

But I am like everyone else. Sometimes I love the security of knowing boundaries. I don't always like not knowing whether what I'm doing is right or wrong. Sometimes people present you with situations, with relationships, that are as clear as mud and sometimes you wonder whether it's easier to just walk away; not if your heart's not in it, but whether your heart should be in it at all. But then, these people never give you a real reason for cutting ties, no satisfaction of claiming the moral high ground and wiping your hands clean.

Sometimes the lack of clarity is exciting. There are some friendships that I can't even remember how they started; I remember life without them, but I don't remember when they came but I would be crazy sad if I would have to live life without them. But I really hate incongruency, inconsistency, never quite being on the same page with someone; a few months back somebody referred to me, and 'us', as 'friends' and I was so shocked I just blurted out that I had no idea that we were friends.

Lately a lot of my relationships have been underpinned by paranoia. Ever since I fell out with a few of my so-called friends earlier this year I've never been able to shake of a deep and unsettling insecurity - am I boring people? Am I doing this right? What should I say? Should I have said that? Will he/she/they not talk to me ever again, now that I've done this? Should I go? Should I stay?

Too many questions, not enough boundaries.

Narcissus

Narcissus, in Greek mythology, was a hunter who was so proud he disdained those who loved him and fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water, not realizing it was just an image, and died there, unable to look away.

Hardest of Hearts

I am seriously loving Florence + The Machine at the moment!

Hardest of Hearts is one of my favourite songs, and I was really intrigued - and agreed with - the concept that it is the littlest, pettiest, insignificant and often unintentional hurts that hurt the most. That was the theme I was going with for this poem.

One of the things that I hate about myself is that I don't always have the confidence to stand up for myself and tell people that this is not right, this is not fair, that you've hurt me and I deserve better. I feel like I let people get away with far too much sometimes, because even when they apologise I'm always the first to brush everything aside. The biggest part of this is that I get hurt by the most unintentional and, often, irrational things; and because I know how petty my complaint is and how disproportionate my emotions are to things, I've learnt to keep my mouth shut for better or for worse. This is probably exacerbated by the fact that I hang out with a lot of boys, and it's mostly boys and the silly tactless things they do that can sometimes cut deep. But I'm terrified of confrontations or, worse, losing what I have. I'm silently seething at most people I know, but I only bring up things that I feel are really justified.

Another thing on my mind when I wrote this is that I'm always afraid of pushing things too far, because I'm truly hopeless at predicting and anticipating people's reactions to what I do; I'd much rather make it known that it is pretty much impossible to weird me out, and let other people make the first move, as it were. This is also shown in Invocation; there's no way in hell I could be the incubus/Cesare Borgia character in Invocation, not in the here and now, anyway - but I honestly wouldn't mind being the paramour, as it were.

Pyramus and Thisbe is the story that Romeo & Juliet is based on - in which an idiot jumps to conclusions and kills himself, essentially. Pyramus and Thisbe are separated by a wall, but whisper through the cracks, and I feel like sometimes not only lovers, but friends are sometimes forced to do that as well - but it is infuriating when you think that the 'wall' is purely your own creation, but nobody has the strength or the courage to pull it down so you can look someone square in the eye. 

Invocation

A little too disturbing?

The inspiration for this one (especially the title) was Invocation by Frederick Leighton, which is a 19th century engraving of a Vestal Virgin - invocation meaning 'to invoke'. And a scene called 'Intruder' from The Borgias. Just to be clear, this isn't some kind of abstinence preach or, um, celebration of rape or anything - I just thought it would be interesting to explore the emotions of an unequal relationship, a kind of awakening...that kind of thing.

You know that line in Hallelujah - I've seen your flag on the marble arch/love is not a victory march? I was looking at the psychology behind that, how love and relationships are rarely equal, and despite our pursuit of equality humans rarely find joy in it. I think that far too often, in mythology and history and popular culture, seduction is seen as something done against one's will, and I think that's a rather sexist interpretation of things; I like the idea of exploring the psychology behind allowing oneself to be defeated, and how defeat is not necessarily a bad or powerless thing.

Higher Ground

I love the theatre. Next year I'll spend my entire allowance on student rush tickets to the theatre and spend all my time begging my friends to join me. There's something about the ambience, the excitement, the realism of theatre that you simply cannot find in books or movies. It's beautiful.

Mummers Plays were medieval comedies, often very theatrical, with a great sense of the ridiculous. Mummers were paid actors who did not fully immerse themselves in the universe of a text; they carried themselves with the air of one fully aware of the pretence - the word 'mummer' also referred to paid actors used in political intrigues, such as in The White Queen by Philippa Gregory. I'm not like that; once I sink into something or someone I lose touch of reality, I lose touch of the cold hard truth that very little means anything to anyone anymore.

But when life and love feels like a sham, and makes you a fool...for some reason, it's the pretense that causes very real pain. When I was very young I fell into something without realizing that it was little more than a game; this was in a time when games really were just games, unlike now.   

Skipping a grade has forced me grow up very quickly; such is the nature of high school that the maturity difference between the grades are astounding, and has little to do with physical age. But it also felt like running away from a false start, and I'm not altogether ashamed of that. I did nothing more than seek higher ground.

Today I coincidentally went back to a place where I passed a very brief, frustratingly self-conscious time with someone. It still smells the same, still feels the same, but I felt like a stranger intruding on a theatre set, and I realized that I'd moved on, a long time ago, and I don't have those vulnerabilities now that I'm on higher ground looking down. I always used to avoid that part of the campus, until today when I walked by and felt nothing, not even numbness.

I wrote this with no real theme or title until I wrote the bit about 'higher ground', and it's true; I claimed the higher ground not only in leaving one class for another, but also the moral high ground as far as this person is concerned.

It is strange to have finally lived long enough to let go of something that, in another time and place - in another life - meant the world to you.

The Hardest Part

I've always been fascinated about how, when things go pear shaped, we only focus on the negatives; he said she said, how it all went down. We forget the flirting, the smiles, the compliments, every touch and look is drowned in a wave of bitterness and sadness, regret and anger. By saying that there was a 'hardest part' of a relationship, or a dissolution of a relationship, allows one to go through the motions of moving on whilst still holding on to the precious memories of someone who was, at some point, very precious to you.

The poem itself is a discussion of how diffusion of responsibility works so tragically, and so beautifully, well in high school, and how school is a constant game of charades. There is no point in kicking a fuss, sometimes, because whether you let it all show or put on your perfect poker face, nobody gives a damn, anyway.

By the way, this isn't about anything or anyone in particular. Gotye wrote 'Somebody That I Used To Know' as a mashup of 'every single ex girlfriend he ever had'. This is a bit like that.   

quod me nutrit me destruit

quod me nutrit me destruit roughly translates to 'what nourishes me destroys me', and is thought to have originated from Christopher Marlowe - an Elizabethan coulda-woulda-shoulda who would be a household name had a little somebody called Shakespeare not existed. The idea is intriguing to me, mostly because we don't apply it often enough to the modern world; we don't think about the side effects of technology and chemicals, only the reported benefits. But I think it also applies to relationships; the most unhealthy, sordid, necessary friendships that could only have been avoided if you had been brave enough to endure things in solitude; the people who have what you need but make you pay a terrible price for it; the kind of relationships you can't walk away from because despite of everything that has been said and done it is an astonishingly deep and tragically tenuous bond. The only way to get a kind of grim closure is if things end with a big bang; but even though the sea is vast and extraordinary and necessary, you can't set fire to the ocean.

By the way, two song references - Fix You from Coldplay and Turning Tables from Adele. 

Yellow

There were many sources of inspiration for this. Unlike my other poems - The Girl Named Beauty is an actual person I know, and also features in kai su, teknon - this one isn't addressed to anyone in particular; actually, it is, I just don't know who yet. It's what I wanted to say in Potemkin, only in a much more eloquent and much less creepy way. It was also, inspired, in part by Coldplay - I have written a few Coldplay poems before (Princess of China, Paradise and Viva la Vida) - but in this one the link was more tenuous, and refers to lots of Coldplay songs and Coldplay as a band in general; it's called 'Yellow' because I couldn't think of a better name and, as Chris Martin said, in an alternate universe 'Yellow' might have been called 'Playboy'. I also think that much of the domestic discord in suburbian society is caused by the overwhelming burden on women to create things - make men love her, have babies, make the marriage work, create a loving home environment, etc - and so I love men who are artists, who create things, too. I love men who are brave enough to expose a piece of themselves; Chris Martin wrote Gwyneth Paltrow two songs (Fix You and Moses) and I think it's the sweetest thing; infinitely sweeter than a bunch of tacky flowers. This whole thing occured to me a few days ago when someone told me that they would marry an engineer, because 'he could fix things'. I want to go one better than that. I would love to love an artist; I want to create things with someone.  

The Girl Named Beauty

Ignorance and judgement distorts your perception terribly. 

Solitaire, Thomas and Anna

I've always been fascinated in how short and dramatic and violent life used to be. Love, death, sex and war - everything happened, one after the other, and everyone was 200% involved in everything they did. I love how nobody cared if somebody felt too deeply, loved too deeply, overreacted; life was too short to care.

I think a poet who expresses this particularly well is Sir Thomas Wyatt, who is rather famous for being madly in love with Anne Boleyn. Melodramatic is an understatement; if this guy were alive now he would probably be diagnosed with every crazy person disease in the book. But I think he, and his work, is beautiful. I love the drama and the music in his work, I love the passion and lust and despair. I love him because he felt what I feel now, and isn't afraid of it as I am, as they are.

So this poem is for me, Solitaire, and for Thomas. And Anna, who had more luck as a muse than as a queen.

By the way, Cristy (Belephant) would like to make it very clear that 'you have no heart/so you have stolen mine' was her idea taken out of context by me from a certain conversation. 

Katarina

When I say that the meaning of this poem should be obvious, I am, obviously, writing this from Anne Boleyn's perspective - there are many hints to this, with 'Katarina' meaning 'Katherine of Aragon', the plain gold ring 'replaced with six' and, morbidly, 'you will always be head and shoulders above me'. I've always wondered what Anne Boleyn thought of her predecessor; popular legend has it that they were bitter enemies, and Anne Boleyn famously wore bright yellow upon hearing of Katherine's lonely death. But I can't help but think that Anne must have had a great respect for Katherine - she was, after all, a formidable queen and adversary, and put up an amazing fight to keep what was rightfully hers. It must also be noted that yellow is apparently the colour of mourning in the Spanish royal court. I also think that Anne must have felt a little deja vu as her marriage collapsed, and she had to endure what Katherine had to endure - miscarriage after miscarriage, as well as Henry's infidelity and notorious temper. Whether that's just me being romantic or not, you can't deny the similarities between the two women, and how they lived and died loving a monster - as Henry celebrated when Katherine died, he went hunting the day that Anne was executed. As I have gotten older and made some increasingly bizarre relationships I've felt like I can relate more to Katherine of Aragon; I've always loved Anne Boleyn. There are two song references in Katarina - Turning Tables by Adele and Plain Gold Ring by Kimbra. I worked on Katarina for two days and, funnily enough, it originally had nothing to do with Anne Boleyn; I was originally trying to write something to express my own pain and frustration; which is why the historical references are more towards the end of the poem.

Freefall

I feel like I explained Freefall in this post here

Warrior

I really feel like I shouldn't have called it Warrior - I only did so because I felt like I was plaguerising the last line, which is from the Converse collaboration. Otherwise, to be honest...I wrote it on a swing (back and forth and back and forth).


kai su, teknon

I told someone recently that I felt like he was two different people. I realized today that I actually, scientifically, have two different personalities. I feel like a lot of people, especially in a claustrophobic environment like high school, are two different people - who they are, and who people think they are. I wrote kai su, teknon to illustrate how people are altered by the self-consciousness and insecurity that comes when you, or you were, attracted to someone; and how this magically disappears when you're around people you love equally, but never have and never will see in the same way. I've always found it funny, that, in spite of the charms, the former will always be disinterested and despite 'throwing down armour' the latter will love unconditionally. kai su, teknon are allegedly the last words of Caesar to one his assassins, Brutus; this has traditionally been translated as a reaction to betrayal (Brutus was as a son to Caesar), but it has also been interpreted as foreshadowing Brutus' own political demise and death in Philippi - a sort of 'you'll be next', as it were.

Princess of China

This is another Tudor reference - everyone considers Anne of Cleves 'the lucky wife' because she escaped marriage to Henry, and possibly execution at his hands. Contrary to popular belief, Anne of Cleves is now thought to have been quite pretty - or at least not the 'Flanders Mare' that she is in popular culture - and as lame as this sounds, she just wasn't Henry's type. It was an arranged marriage, after all, and she was no Anne Boleyn - they had no common language, no common interests, absolutely nothing in common that would endear themselves to each other. But was Anne of Cleves really 'the lucky one'? She lived her life completely alone, without passion or affection. Sometimes I think she got the short straw.

Caramel

A bit like kai su, teknon. Looking at it, it is kind of creepy and very irrational - but I was really irritated. And humiliated. When you don't know someone very well, you have to take everything on face value, and it's the little things that hurt - this was before it occurred to me that how people present themselves isn't necessarily everything they are. I don't want to remove it because it is a very accurate snapshot of emotion, but it is nonetheless a very weird thing to write about a friend. 

Potemkin

If you happened to catch me at the right time you might have seen that I published and then deleted a poem. I don't normally do that. Potemkin fascinates me. He is raw, masculine, supremely intelligent, passionate and ambitious; yet he is everything any woman with a scrap of ambition should desire in a man. Potemkin and Catherine were lovers, best friends, co-conspirators, intellectual equals, confidantes and soulmates. It fascinated me because Potemkin goes against the stereotype of a queen's lover - either someone who completely monopolizes her and has her submitting to his every whim, or else a feminine, weak, docile man with no ambition and a religiously fanatical adoration. If you missed it, I was writing about waiting for Potemkin to arrive, and in that faith finding peace in other people you have loved moving on from you; because they will have their Catherines, and you will have your Potemkin.