Alien Landscape

something sinister is brewing.
it started when my eyes refused to see the tangible.
constantly fixed to a distant future, scouring for possible hitch-hikers. i dreamt of my daughter. apocalypse dreams are no longer surprising but my daughter? my clever mimicking daughter with wispy hair and laughter like rainstorms. what is there not to be scared of in the world? give me one thing. just one. i try hard not to be when i hear whispers. shh.. the future. it doesn't.. it doesn't exist.

darting in paranoia on the landscape. having long talks with fat African women in colourful garb, flying down a hill on a skateboard with feet, playing with Nuri, sleeping beside a crackling fire or just running. running with my own two feet, with a horse, with children, with Nuri sometimes. i don't like being on the landscape sometimes because i know i would never want anyone to see it. it is important to understand.

those books i drown in. creatures other minds manifested whom i fall in love with dozens of times. the wonderful thing is, they don't love me back and it's ok. the belligerent minotaurs, brave Timothy who i want so much to be like, Bastian and Atreyu and Falkor, the wizards of Ark, silver gold and bronze dragons of Krynn, kenders, the magnificent Africans of Okri's tales, Sophie and Socrates, Peter Pan, oh so many more and Sturm. dear dear Sturm Brightblade. he would be scornful of who i am and that's ok. it rarely isn't.

if forced to acknowledge the tangible, i would peer at it through the reflection from F's eyes. there is no greater magician on this earth other than the one you love. of course there is also the kaleidoscope F got me. kaleidoscopes are funny and wonderful. i never go anywhere without it.

with my mind always wandering many planes, playing many personalities, everything is so conflicted. everything in tangles, emotions undecided. there are voices that have been hissing from the darker corners of the mind, which i have been desperate in convincing myself that they are not part of who i am. all the things that they whisper; blasphemous unholy filthy evil things. it makes my head jerk involuntarily, trying to shake them off. i worry that one day it would jerk so violently that i break my neck.

i don't know their origin and each day i get more frightened thinking perhaps i birthed those voices, i gave them their black souls, i fuel their burning hatred. is that why people look at me so contemptously? what stories have my eyes betrayed? these voices. i am in agony of their conquest. i tire of them as if they fed on me for more ideas for their horrible hisses that render me near hysterical.
they make me loathe myself. they are like broiling thunderheads rumbling in from an unknown source, blocking out the sky. i can't see anything but the blackness of who i am.
even with F gushing at me and proclaiming how beautiful and expressive i am, i only see the poison clouding his vision and reason or the kindness of his big wonderfully bottomless eyes. what troubles me is that even if he tasted and heard the evil that is the murk and filth of these errant voices, he would still love me as ever. i hope his devotion won't one day be his undoing. what is a wonderful magical boy like him doing with such a black person like me. rhetorical; i don't want or need or appreciate an answer.
i wish i could say that he, that foolish lovely boy, is the one keeping me sane.

[29 April 2005, Friday]
i banished most of those villainous slugs only with God's help. there are still few lingering. i know now where they come from. but i am too ashamed to write it down here. certain flaws are garish and possess a distinctive stink that can be detected a continent away. this is not one of them. this one is gray and black, swirling and discreet. it is slime dripping mutely to form a restless sea of guilt and self-hatred. it is the scum that colour my tears black and unworthy.
Posted by NHJ 4/27/2005 07:57:00 pm

Wednesday, April 27, 2005