Alien Landscape

you may not.

May came over last night. it was the most quiet moment i've ever had with someone. i suppose it was sort of perfect. sort of perfect. now there's an oxymoron.
the only thing that bothered me was the cigarrette dangling on her lips. she puffed and pulled all the night. she is wondrous with smoke rings.

we watched from my window as a pair of friends had quite a nasty spat two levels down. i tried to ignore her when she tried to goad me into having a stick. all i wanted to do really, was have a deep drag on one. but i can't do that.

May thinks it's weird how i want to do so much but never do anything. i think it's weird how she does everything she wants without a care for the consequences. that girl would not have an inkling of the meaning of responsibility if it sat down in front of her and started clipping her long, dirty fingernails. May has an earthy scent, which is a light way of saying she doesn't believe in cleaning herself. she likes to remind me that, if life's not a daring adventure, then it's nothing at all. whatever that meant.

i shrugged it off. i was used to these immature proclamations designed to make chaotic, unfettered behaviour seem cool and rebellious. still i could not help thinking that she could be right. maybe if i am more like May, i wouldn't have all these paranoid feelings.

like looking left and right when coming out of the elevator, afraid that something would run me down. or having multiple flashes of many ways of dying in any ordinary thing i do, like slipping and cracking my skull on the sink while i'm having a shower or dreading a boa constrictor coming out of the toilet bowl and devour from beneath me.

there's also this new thing i have against old men. i cannot to sit beside them in bus or train rides or anywhere for that matter. they keep scratching themselves and there's all this dead skin flying about with a funny smell and it just disturb me that i'm breathing it all in. my lungs filling up with the stench of decay. WHY do they keep scratching themselves?

.
i don't know about May but i don't want to have that look she has in her eyes. that peculiar mix of regret and eager anticipation. it's almost like she has an illicit, violent affair with pain and failure. she knows something is wrong but she can't help doing it again and again because it feels so good.

it seems that my closest friends are the most imperfect specimens of human beings. imperfect is good sometimes. like my boyfriend, the passionate and clueless Fir. he is my anchor. when i am with him, all my paranoia dissolve into meaningless things. i drink through straws without flinching at the idea that some auntie who doesn't wash her hands after peeing has touched them, i eat outside food without washing my hands twice after and i don't feel like i'm being watched. (ok i still do. but not as bad.)

watched. yes, that's what May makes me feel like. like she's watching me all the time even though she could hardly meet my eye. both of us have problems with eye contact. it's not so much about lack of self confidence than it is about just plain and simple paranoia. the things i'm able to see when i look into her eyes and Fir's eyes and Siti's eyes, makes me fear what they are able to see when they look into mine.

she told me when she was leaving, with her eyes fixed on tying her bootlaces, i know what's your problem. the unattainable tastes so sweet to you that you don't ever want to attain it.

i shrugged it off. til that point everything seemed so right but the way she put it made it sound like it's some kind of a problem.
Posted by NHJ 9/27/2006 06:11:00 pm

Wednesday, September 27, 2006