caged in

"The human understanding is not composed of dry light, but is subject to influence from the will and the emotions, a fact that creates fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true." - Francis Bacon, "The New Organon"


Reality fades with time. I choose them: now frozen and unable to accept, nor remembered in my sleep. No longer deep but shallow, no longer solid but hollow; echoing only the words of others. Unafraid but not fearless, sad and sorrowful, yet tearless. Reality seems to be this hostile place where relationships decay, people die, the search for love and acceptance is futile, and every attempt comes with failure. And so, I sit and ponder, stand and wonder: should I deny or not, give up or not?

Yesterday night, perhaps, was one of the frequent times I found myself denying the concept of reality at most since the last two months. In the small kitchen to celebrate a friend's birthday, the reality seemed to have been moulded into hypocrisy; it was plagued by superficiality. I was somewhat very disgusted. I was disgusted at the manifested expectation placed by others, disgusted at the multiple toasts made in the name of "brotherhood", disgusted at the same group of people who stood united but divided by the barriers of skin, race and intelligence, disgusted at the loss of common courtesy, disgusted at the loss of respect for women, disgusted at the idea of preference of one over another, disgusted at the thought that no wrongs could ever be righted - not even with an apology.

Yet, the hypocrisy had settled in the kitchen so silently but long enough to be noticed. At some length, I felt relieved to be in a place of reality devoid of sincerity, but also upset about my isolation. Quite simply, everyone was like someone trapped in cloth wound around the face and body; desperately clawing, trying to rip free.

Yet, my penny was not entirely lost in the fountain of youth, naïveté. In the small kitchen, I was somewhat still hopeful. I was hopeful for I could still see the squiggles my friends emanated, radiated like the sun - they poisoned the heart. I was engaged by every word, and I am sure, were I less intoxicated (don't say anything), the ecstasy would slowly flow from me.

Nothing more than plastic, nothing less than my reality: I was and still am hopeful to know that friends can be so complementary in this gray-scale rainbow. We get ahead of things with suggestive smiles, the light that glistens the most reflects from the cracks, and sometimes, we want to be the glue gun to each other's shattered glass.

And yes, in the absence of my ability to express, sometimes, many may have thought that everything's forgotten in the attic, only in a shiny display case. Yet, she always gazes from the other side. She blows the dust away. With that, there wouldn't be mountains of insincerity to sift through to find something tangible and untainted - not even after three years.

As Cristina Yang put it, "If I murdered someone, she's the person I'd call to help me drag the corpse across the living room floor. She's my person."

They are my people. She's my person.