Drawers

We all have secret lives.

Secret parts of ourselves, kept in secret places, like drawers that reach into the dusty dark and keep your fingers grasping like knobbly ghosts.

People are so surprised when we show these parts of ourselves. But why? Don't we all have hidden sides? Stories to tell that are never told?

Sometimes, these places are not very secret at all. Now we can stow them away all over the web -- where strangers may peruse your pictures and words in the safety of anonymity, while we do the same with theirs.

There is comfort in not knowing each other prior to this instant. There is wonder, delight, disdain, disappointment, nonchalance, ignition, mutual passion -- but we remain strangers. We can enjoy each others' company free of baggage; free of the past. In the moment, nothing else matters.

Secret lives are lonely lives. But in some ways they are also a joy.

To invite someone you know well (in your main sphere of life) into your hidden places is to extend the friendship to intimate new levels. But you don't always have to extend the invitation.

At this secret party, people can invite themselves. They can pop by unnoticed, surprising you, surprising themselves; by thinking that they knew you and finding out they were wrong.

So who leads the party? Who holds the key to the drawers? Was there ever a key?

And who do we trust with it?



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For want of grace

Read the above. I've just discovered the title to my life as a movie.

I was inspired by the humorous pictures and captions in an article titled "19 Awkward Signs for Common Moments." Especially when I realised that yes, I relate too much to these. As in most of these.

You can take a moment to scroll through this awesome Cracked piece I'm talking about so we can lol together (I'm a bit --OK, a lot-- of a Cracked addict) ....

http://www.cracked.com/article_19188_19-warnings-signs-common-awkward-moments.html




Done?

My awkwardness used to make me cringe. It used to make me want to bury myself alive. I mean it. Hand me a shovel and some ground that wasn't cement, and see what I try to do.

But naturally, wisdom (that comes with the old age of 24) tells me I should cringe less and laugh at myself more. Hellyes. I love my inner sage.

I was a clumsy child, now I'm an awkward adult. If the world can learn to live with me, we will all be happier. If it can't, I will be a bit lonelier. But hopefully lonely with a sense of style.


Speaking of style, there was a complaint recently that I should dress a little more professionally.

...

....

.....Ya think?





~ ~ ~

Don't just say grace at mealtime; pray for it. That you may move smoothly to dessert without ruining your favourite shirt.
~Serpent 2:26



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A Theory Of Monsters

The most terrifying creatures are reflections of what they project. Those that only torment us but are themselves tormented.

Monsters who move with twisted limbs or stilted walk, who leap in freakish fashion instead of an invincible bound, who seem to have woken after a decade or a century of untold suffering.

Ghosts with sad faces, vengeful child-spooks with haunted eyes, persistent whispers in the afterworld that come from having been hurt in life.

The tragic Frankenstein who was created and then deserted. The werewolf who howls with the pain of every transformation. The Blade bloodsuckers with split gaping maws who seem to have been made as a result of torturous experiment. Zombies with remnants of their slow, diseased deaths - and echoes of their former selves - clinging to their grey skin.

Without this element of tragedy, a monster is not truly complete. Monsters are more than just our darker sides. They are the dimension where we keep our sorrow and anger, anxiety and fear. And when we fail to deal with those fears, the monster finally bursts forth.

We are them and they are us.

The most feared boogeyman is one who has your face.


~

A Love That Lies

Love is a powerful thing.

Love can save the world. Love can save lives. Love can save you from jumping off the edge.

But it can also push you off it.

Because without a little thing called respect, love is a brute force.

It can be blind and ruthless and take things down in its path with no regard for the feelings of others -- even, ironically, those of the ones it is trying to save in the first place.

And perhaps...

...this brute force isn't really called Love. Not the pure and undiluted, unadulterated version that we come into this world knowing and then almost immediately lose.

It's called -- what? Overprotectiveness, maybe. Overbearing; caring too much. An animal instinct to guard fiercely what one holds dear. Or just the dominance of the Ego: an overriding force that gets at what it aims to achieve, and damn the consequences. It may have the best intentions in mind. But it forgets. It forgets that one aim is not everything. It forgets that everyone else, too, has flaws and feelings. 

But the thing with that sort of blind charging fire, is that it ultimately destroys. 

And isn't that the antithesis of Love?

~