burn up in your atmosphere
Sep. 26th, 2011 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
levitySometimes the English language is almost-irredeemably inadequate for all the things I want to say.
---
Apparently I am not enough of a cliche to be writing this at two in the morning while sitting at Billy's desk in the dark the early morning of our Biochem exam, trying my very best to spin a pen and thinking of Virginia Woolf. It's Orven's fault, really. He asked about the young Indian girl who was being compared to her, only she was in actuality being compared to Emily Dickinson. When the topic comes up of course you have to latch onto it, and maybe bring up Sylvia Plath and her gas oven suicide and how her husband's second wife went on to commit suicide the same way, and so I did. I may be not-cliche enough to be writing this in East during lecture instead of in the sweltering heat of pre-storm Metro Manila during the dead hours, but in every other aspect I live up to expectations.
"Personally I like Virginia Woolf's suicide note better," I said, only half on autopilot, because there are only a choice few things that are interesting at one in the morning, and genetics isn't one of them.
Allison turned to Billy. "You know what, she worries me when she talks about liking suicide notes."
I tried to clarify, best as anyone could qualify anything with an exam in seven hours and five transes to go. "No, no, it's romantic. She tells her huband that if anyone could be happy it would have been them, only yeah." My ability to convey depth and emotion amazes even me, sometimes.
Allison was still talking to Billy. "But now she has someone to send romantic suicide notes to."
I had more sense than to say that if I could write anything the way Virginia Woolf could write suicide notes then I could go and walk into the Pasig with my pockets full of stones for all I cared, and not just because I've long since been over that phase. (I could have been a decent-at-best footballer, yeah?) I had more sense than to say that that's actually a very convenient bonus of being in love, an addressee for all the metaphors attached to otherwise-directionless emotions, or ideas of emotions. My favorite TedTalk speech is still Elizabeth Gilbert's, where she talks about what I have to call, despite all my distaste for the term, the creative process, the inspiration behind and the belief in the divinity thereof. Making the connection is a bit of an exaggeration, because I'm not doing anything yet, but I'm still alive and I'm enjoying it, so maybe that's good enough. For anyone else, it would be. There is nothing of the divine in him- he will be the first to agree with this sentiment- which means that everything is, I guess.
I would write him coliseums, if I had them, if I could. I would write him coliseums and broadsheet dreams and trains at four-thirty in the afternoon, just before the people start pouring in, sunlight flooding the floors. Cold roads leading up mountains and crater lakes and blue-and-black sea snakes cutting through schools of fish. Streets that smell like ocean and vehicle exhaust and jungle backyards burning and every single glorious thing I've lived. I would write him love stories, I would write the crazy sprawling soap opera that is The Epic if I could, because it's what he deserves, because there's no point and no end result in saying I kind of permanently want to hug you except when I want to kiss you except when- and also to go along in that vein would mean upping the rating, which, no.
The point is: no suicide notes. Notebooks filled with the specific self-absorption of adoration only a little more optional than gravity, apparently. Epics, if I could get my head out of my head enough to make them work. And if all this writing would maybe one day enable me to write the one word, the one sentence, that would protect him from the grief at the center of- who the hell are we kidding- at the center of everything human then I could start feeling like I can pay back all I owe.
---
Apparently I am not enough of a cliche to be writing this at two in the morning while sitting at Billy's desk in the dark the early morning of our Biochem exam, trying my very best to spin a pen and thinking of Virginia Woolf. It's Orven's fault, really. He asked about the young Indian girl who was being compared to her, only she was in actuality being compared to Emily Dickinson. When the topic comes up of course you have to latch onto it, and maybe bring up Sylvia Plath and her gas oven suicide and how her husband's second wife went on to commit suicide the same way, and so I did. I may be not-cliche enough to be writing this in East during lecture instead of in the sweltering heat of pre-storm Metro Manila during the dead hours, but in every other aspect I live up to expectations.
"Personally I like Virginia Woolf's suicide note better," I said, only half on autopilot, because there are only a choice few things that are interesting at one in the morning, and genetics isn't one of them.
Allison turned to Billy. "You know what, she worries me when she talks about liking suicide notes."
I tried to clarify, best as anyone could qualify anything with an exam in seven hours and five transes to go. "No, no, it's romantic. She tells her huband that if anyone could be happy it would have been them, only yeah." My ability to convey depth and emotion amazes even me, sometimes.
Allison was still talking to Billy. "But now she has someone to send romantic suicide notes to."
I had more sense than to say that if I could write anything the way Virginia Woolf could write suicide notes then I could go and walk into the Pasig with my pockets full of stones for all I cared, and not just because I've long since been over that phase. (I could have been a decent-at-best footballer, yeah?) I had more sense than to say that that's actually a very convenient bonus of being in love, an addressee for all the metaphors attached to otherwise-directionless emotions, or ideas of emotions. My favorite TedTalk speech is still Elizabeth Gilbert's, where she talks about what I have to call, despite all my distaste for the term, the creative process, the inspiration behind and the belief in the divinity thereof. Making the connection is a bit of an exaggeration, because I'm not doing anything yet, but I'm still alive and I'm enjoying it, so maybe that's good enough. For anyone else, it would be. There is nothing of the divine in him- he will be the first to agree with this sentiment- which means that everything is, I guess.
I would write him coliseums, if I had them, if I could. I would write him coliseums and broadsheet dreams and trains at four-thirty in the afternoon, just before the people start pouring in, sunlight flooding the floors. Cold roads leading up mountains and crater lakes and blue-and-black sea snakes cutting through schools of fish. Streets that smell like ocean and vehicle exhaust and jungle backyards burning and every single glorious thing I've lived. I would write him love stories, I would write the crazy sprawling soap opera that is The Epic if I could, because it's what he deserves, because there's no point and no end result in saying I kind of permanently want to hug you except when I want to kiss you except when- and also to go along in that vein would mean upping the rating, which, no.
The point is: no suicide notes. Notebooks filled with the specific self-absorption of adoration only a little more optional than gravity, apparently. Epics, if I could get my head out of my head enough to make them work. And if all this writing would maybe one day enable me to write the one word, the one sentence, that would protect him from the grief at the center of- who the hell are we kidding- at the center of everything human then I could start feeling like I can pay back all I owe.
