Turpentine

I chose to wait. I decided that waiting for the ultimate final destination was better than moving on to mediocrity. So when I see that they're lives are moving on without me, why do I feel saddened? I don't regret my decision 95% of the time, but the other 5% are just an agonizing and circuitous slideshow of all the reasons I have to melt my sword down and start hammering it into a better shape. I am walking ambivalence, and the people I love pay the price more than I do sometimes. It's so selfish to want anything in a world that makes it impossible to achieve a single goal without feeling the flesh of an innocent person's face against the sole of your boot. It isn't fair that instead of using this fervent realization of my mistakes to fix the things I broke, I just sleep on the couch and stare at the ceiling, praying for rain to wash it all away (or at least give me a miserable enough head cold to wipe the slate clean). I don't want to be Meredith Grey, I really wish I wasn't Meredith Grey. Excuses pave the way through my maze of hallucinatory, straight-faced humor. It's this twisted gut reaction to lean towards the "i'm fine" approach that keeps me believing in crossed fingers and lucky pennies. There is nothing worse than straddling the line between harboring a delusional, innocent hope alongside an insatiable hunger for the ability to hope. There is nothing worse than trying to be yourself and getting tangled in your personalities. There is nothing worse than knowing that you're on display for an empty gallery. My chest is open, exposing my beating heart, and even the crickets are too busy to chirp away tonight. At least for tonight, it's quiet.

copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Thanksgiving In Retrospect

I’m thankful for this tunnel of light I just pulled up in front of. Amidst this horrible, threshing feeling in my heart, I found that I’m not broken. I still have hope. I still have a necklace of optimism laced around my neck. For the first time in my life, I can feel that my growing up is more than ostensible. I realized that this thing, this experience that I thought would break me once and for all, hasn’t made me bitter. Not only am I alive and breathing, but I have no doubt in my mind that I will get up and walk away from this fire unscathed. For the first time, I’ve realized that nothing can take you down but you. I might be lost, I might be forever caught up in my delusions, but I’m not broken. The next time you touch me, I will be heavier, fuller, and lighter all at the same time. It’s a tragic and beautiful thing to realize how much power you really have. So today, that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m thankful for every single thing I have, and every single thing I don’t, because I am me, and I am not broken.

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

The Moon On My Ceiling

I was reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, and I came across a quote that quite literally knocked the wind out of me. Kundera goes on to explain how in all Latin-derived languages, the word compassion is built from a prefix-suffix combination that means, “from suffering”. This makes the whole business of being compassionate seem condescending, like you are lowering yourself to the level of someone less fortunate. It’s a word that has nothing to do with love or empathy. But in all other languages, German for example, the word compassion is created by a prefix-suffix combination that means “from feeling”. It’s the ultimate emotion because it means you are feeling exactly what the other is feeling. You are tapping into their unique frequency as if their nerves were attached directly to you. It’s an honorable and perhaps the most powerful sentiment in the human emotional spectrum. I don’t want to be the former. What use is it to be understood if you’re just a project? If you don’t want to understand me because you love me or feel connected to me in a profound way, then what’s the point? Compassion shouldn’t be a talent; it shouldn’t be an ability that you spread around the world as if you’re doing a good deed. It should be a natural instinct, when in the presence of someone who has grown into your heart like a rooted tree, to feel exactly what they feel. You can be as complicated as you want, but that shouldn’t be a test of clairvoyance for someone who comes along. If they should see right through you like an x-ray machine, it doesn’t mean they have achieved some honorable level of greatness. It can only be rendered significant if they can feel their heel throb when you step on a tack, or taste salt on their cheeks when you cry because you couldn’t make your rent payment again. I don’t care about being understood, it’s irrelevant in most cases. I just want an invisible piece of string to connect my heart to yours. But asking that is equivalent to me asking you to shrink the moon and place it on my ceiling so I can fall asleep fearlessly at night. I believe in magic, but I think you can only create it for yourself. The rest of the world will have to find their own way to get to where they’re going.

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I hate that feeling where everything you are begins to slip through your fingers like sand. You build yourself up, not realizing that the foundation is shaky, and at the slightest touch the whole thing crumbles. A single breath from the lips of change and you wake up one morning having shed your skin in the night. How nice would it be to be able to trust yourself? to trust in your instincts and convictions as if they were permanent? But there's always something that we want that our present selves can't reach out and grab, so as our desires change so do we. But what are we supposed to lean on then? If you think about it, the only constant thing is the past, but if you lean on the past then your not living at all. We're left hopping from one space to the next as they shift and shake and throw us tumbling off the edge only to land, not so gracefully, into the arms of the next person who claims to "understand". Then they catch onto you and wheel around your head until your too dizzy to notice them slipping out the door with a suitcase full of your ideas and plans.

I'm just wondering why. Why am I willing to participate in the game even though I clearly understand there's no way to win? And why am I willing to lose everything for someone who is as permanent as dirt on a car windshield. One revelatory rain storm and they're gone.

I'm just wondering why. Why am I so in love with idea that I'm not one thing, but everything and everything I want to be? Or maybe everything you wish I was.

I'm just wondering why being sad can be so wonderful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMG6W-kPk6g
Drop-Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.
Sylvia Plath

"People Are Strange That's Why We're Strangers"

I have mentally regressed in age. I don't know what happened. Have I always been this sentimental? Where's my brick wall, I don't want to be made of glass. I don't want to be made of glass. It's funny what happens to a person once they've completely assimilated themselves into loneliness. It becomes more than a lifestyle, or a state of mind, or an emotion. I don't know how I let it get this far. I know how you see me. I know you think you know things about me that I don't know about myself, that you have x-ray vision. I hope to God you do. Because that's the only hope I have of getting out of this mess I've made.

It's kind of funny...but I get lonely too sometimes.

To Remember

I predicted that they would be able to read in between the lines, that I had enabled them somehow to do so. That's what I selfishly expected of them. Yet, in the meantime, I had been living with the people I created. Ostensibly I waited impatiently in solitude, yet I was leaning on the shoulders of my imaginary spectrum of personalities. I will admit I have built so many walls over the past few years, but if one were to look closely enough they would see that the walls themselves were made of transparent and malleable material, like plastic. Taking into account the actions of those around me, whom I do not believe have blind eyes, I must conclude that this facade has become a perverse reality. Against my better judgement, I feed and nourish this malicious demon and its basket of fallacies. I stand back and taste salt on my cheeks as I watch it grow and envelope each facet of my being with its shadow. How can I stand in full view of this horror? I call myself a martyr, yet cannot identify the cause to which I have bound myself to. It is well known that loneliness will drive any man or woman mad, but it seems so candid. It seems too conscious of a decent to make the trek without an anesthetic. I am wrought with a dissociative sadness that inundates itself into to every new cell that groans it's way into my pores. I drive long distances and think this through, philosophical skepticism paired with ordinary skepticism ,and no conclusion is derived. I park in the garage, get out of the car, and think "fuck, I'm alone".

I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.
Carson McCullers

copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Glow In The Dark Stars

Ostensibly, I get along better than most. I have my own world, and I fill it to the brim with the things I love. I wake up in the morning and know exactly what I want (a cup of coffee), and I go about my day with open arms. But the reality I see through my eyes feels extremely different. Hollow, empty, full, voluminous....It isn't fair to want so many contradictory things. There's nothing worse than loving to be out of control. Holding up your biggest and most dangerous flaws above the crowd, for show, leave the telling to the metaphors you hand out like paper money. You call yourself a poet because you believe in things while no one believes in you. You call yourself a poet because you write from your own perspective. You call yourself a poet because you make believe you suffer. You call yourself a poet because you play tricks on your own two eyes, and pretend that optical illusions are just a result of blind faith. You call yourself a poet because you can listen to the same song twenty times in a row and still feel tears welling up in your throat. But you're just a scared little girl who was born with an old heart. You're lost, and you love it, but you still continue to shoot up flares into the night sky just to see what will happen. You believe everything happens for a reason, and that everyone is put into your life to play the part of teacher, student, or both. The fear lives on, and the fear lives inside of everything you do. In order to understand the fear, you must become the fear. You must inundate every aspect of who you are and who you want to be with this shadow, and then maybe the light will come. And if the light should come, you ought not tie it on a string around your neck like a key, but shake hands, say hello, and watch it walk away with a straight back and unshaken disposition. A friendly encounter, a fleeting encounter, and a wound to prove it's worth.

Quixotic : foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals; especially : marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action


copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

"One Put It On A Pedestal And Left It There"

Personally, I don't think I'm cynical. I think in order to be cynical one has to be logical as well, and I am the polar opposite of logical. I think my "cynisism" (I'm going to omit the quotations throughout the rest of my prose, but I'm sure you've picked up my drift by now) comes from thinking too much from my own eyes. My cynisism comes from too many hours spent contemplating the pros and cons of being myself. My cynisism comes from awful retail jobs and the mechanical routine of numbers, numbers, numbers. My cynisism comes from one too many late night PB & J's, in the hollow light of a lonely kitchen, against a backdrop of ominous and beautiful movie soundtracks. My cynisim comes from my mother, who cursed me with a pair of permanent and threatening rose colored glasses. A genetic mutation that romantisizes even the smallest instances. My cynisism comes from the self loathing that bites and scratches its way under my skin no matter how hard I kick, and no matter how many pieces of metal I pierce into my body. My cynisism comes from loving, too fully, the things that cannot love me back. My cynisim comes from obsession, an obsession with big and small. My cynisism comes on strongest after I've read The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by Shel Silverstein and feel that nothing in the world could be as impactful as those simple and stark illustrations. "One put it on a pedestal and left it there".


My cynism doesn't translate. It can't be talked out. It can't be cured, because on most days I hold it close to my chest. It's endearing being the opposite of endearing.

It's 3 a.m. and I am wishing I could have just one breakfast with Sara Quin. It's 3 a.m. and I am smitten with Ewan Mcgregor, and wishing I could tell him how much the film Beginners changed my perspective on just about everything. It's 3 a.m. and I'm scolding myself for loving people who might as well belong to my imagination.

It's 3 a.m. and I am feeling particularly cynical.

Goodnight.

Goodmorning?

Time doesn't exist, take it up with Herman Hesse.

copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Dr Pepper Registered Trademark

Tonight I stumbled in through the front door, exhausted from a LONG day at work. I immediately took off my socks, two different patterns of course, and collapsed on the couch. I scoured the internet, routinely searching for some kind of cyber validation that my world exists. I put on a pot of water for macaroni and cheese, and turned to find my mother walking down the stairs in her nightgown. She asked me how my day was and then wrapped her arms around me. I had an earbud playing Lua by Bright Eyes fairly loud and as her embrace strengthened she began to rock me back and forth to the rhythm of the song. She kissed my cheeks and forehead gently and didn't stop for ten minutes. She smelled like Dr. Pepper, which is completely out of character seeing as she HATES the doctor. She hates it so much in fact that I once switched her Diet Coke with my Dr. Pepper at a restaurant just to see her face contort. That's love. That's what love is. I've never felt it so strongly before.

copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Acid

Once in awhile I wake up expecting a horrifyingly strong coffee craving, only to be transfixed and paralyzed with a different type of tenacious electricity floating through me. It’s an acidic restlessness that lays stagnant and venomous on my tongue, promising to eat me alive in a matter of hours, or otherwise serving as a beacon of the striking possibility that I may inflict the same punishment upon any unlucky vermin who should cross me. Generally when I am faced with a typical bout of fidgety agitation, I fight back. I blast Tegan and Sara’s So Jealous so loud, and for so long, that after an hour or two the ringing in my ears has drowned out any and all unwelcome thoughts. If something should go wrong, a backup plan will go into effect immediately. This usually involves a round of binge eating various pepper-laden findings from the kitchen (I have picked up a rather unusual taste for the pungent seasoning), followed by a methodical solo performance of my “discography”. I will go on and face the music, so to speak, until the calloused skin of my fingertips split and shine with fresh drops of blood. But as of late, the sunrise of adulthood has thrown not only looming shadows my way, but also a striking inability to cope with this boxed in feeling. I have continuous nightmares concerning variations of a single theme; suffocation, isolation, and spaces that only seem to get smaller with time. These usually end with my body thrust violently back into reality, tangled in my sheets, and drenched with a salty layer of evidence that my subconscious has won again. How could it be that as a child all it takes to rid yourself of your demons is a trip to grandmas house and a bowl of 3D Doritos (now extinct)?

I see myself boxing. I see myself running, running and never stopping. I see my chest rising and falling to a rhythm. I see wide, open spaces, and endless quantities of breathable air. I see water so clear the earth seems to have a sky to walk on, and a sky above reserved for the divine. I see fingers typing so fast they seem to hover over an invisible plane. I see words so poignant, a symphony sounds in the back of ones mind as they take them in. Letter by letter. Phrase by phrase. Life is but a moment, and a moment is only as human and you wish it.

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Edgar Allen Poe

This is my attempt to mirror his personal style of writing...

In the small, white room she sat. The only form of movement in the room was of her shoulders, as they moved up and down struggling to keep time with her persistent lungs. Inside her body though, a battle raged on. Her heart beat with intense and uneven lurches of pain. Her mind spoke so loudly that she was unable to scream. Her blistered hands were tied to the wall she rested on with decrepit, dirty ropes the color of sewage water. Her eyes remained shaded in an odd color of pink, always stagnant with tears that never faded. Shattered remnants of hope and love that once possessed her lay unrelenting and unwavering on the cold linoleum floor of her chamber. For her love, for him, she would live in this corpse like state until her lungs gave out. Only in this action would she understand that as fast as she catapulted herself to the highest depths of self sacrifice, she fell through the shallow, icy surface of her failures. She was not alone though; in her barrier of loss sat four figures of unthinkable scope. Three of these were of her likeness, in physicality and emotional stature. They, as still as she, were cloaked with truth so that their eyes shone a bright blue, so cold it could penetrate skin. In each pair of eyes lay her story; the sacrifice she made, the expectations she never rose to, the truth she never had courage enough to face. Despite the fact that each unyielding glance she received from her angels tore through her like lightning, it was the fourth member of the circle that carried the most power over her. He had outsized eyes, wet with tears and brimming over with emotion. He wore a complacent stare, full of passion that lay unwritten in her own, stale watch. The sentiments that filled her heart each time she looked up into his facade subsequently sent her into a more hysterical silence than before. A familiar, smug visage; a look worn by one cradled by the safety invested in the worship of another. A look of love; a look she once wore. The familiarity kept her in her corner, fixed to her rigging made of movable knots as weak as her body's rhythm. As weeks passed, the look of adoration developed into a tangible sound. The lips of her company lay immobile as always, yet her eyes lay wide with shock as she heard the whispers become more prominent. At first they were merely a montage of phrases her love once spoke to her. As hours departed, words of anguish; of the darkness that consumed her and drove him away, appeared and faded like smoke. Her heart beat too fast, her sobs welled up in her chest causing a raw, burning pain to melt its way across the planes of her throat like licks of orange flames. The stares of her visitors grew stronger, breathing in time with the murderous poetry. As the fifth hour curved closer to the next, her hands curled into fists. As they began to slither with motion, they slipped from the confines of their chains. She stood, slow and steady, on her knees as she felt the blood pulse through her veins, too fast so that they created a shivering sensation throughout her body. As she gazed through the corner of her eye, she stopped, only to shoot a glare across the room to the corner where her guests once sat. She peered with increasing curiosity into the once full space, pondering how it could now lay so still. It was as if no one had ever moved in the room besides herself. With less than eager movements, she maneuvered herself onto her hands and knees and began to progress to the tall white double doors, carved with glossy patterns and gleaming with the reflection of light. She turned the cold, silver doorknob and stumbled into the bathroom. Now shuffling faster, she crawled, dragging her knees and tearing her skin, to the unusually white base of the sink. with struggle she stood, and felt her body convulse under the unanticipated feeling of her limbs under her nonexistent weight. Slowly, in one minute movement, she lifted her head to peer into a foggy pain of glass hanging above the fixture. her breathing ceased as she took in the ghastly sight. Deep rings of purple overtook her face and radiated from the bottom of her under eyes. Her cheekbones lay sallow, like craters. Her skin took a ghastly, yellow tone. This was a face that had come to her in nightmares, a face that had haunted her memory since the moment he closed the door on the future that had been promised to her. Her boney, shaking hands positioned themselves upon either side of her face. she shuddered, and bumps rose along her arm and stomach. At that moment an emotion shot through her, stronger than the first that had engulfed her aching heart not moments before. Who was this body? this cadaver that only sought to breath in truths meant to damage, meant to kill. There was no life in this corpse. its only purpose was to serve as a casket for the soul that lay inside, painfully waiting for the day it would be carried away to a better place. With impetuous actions, two arms reached top pull a wooden stake from the pule of untouched firewood. Rapidly, she swung her arms, sending the wood into the basin of the sink. Her hand quivered as it reached to enclose itself around a rather jagged piece. In one fleeting shift of her fingers blood began to drip from her wounded neck. As her body emptied itself of the life she felt it no longer deserved, and before her eyes could completely fog over, she was afforded a glance to the entrance of her deathly chamber. A familiar, mud brown loafer carried its proprietor through the french doors. It took only three words to bring her to life, and three words to carry her out of it.

The end.

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

At Eighteen

When I was nine years old, my biggest wish in life was to be twelve. Indeed, twelve was a good year. Thirteen marked the beginning of my foray into the world of dating (during that time dating was when a boy you liked asked you to “go out with him” at the local shopping mall only to wither under your sadistic attempts to hide from him in the school hallways). Fourteen was a year full of blind faith and false promise, a.k.a. high school. Looking back I feel I should have known better than to believe that there was anything remotely resplendent about the gray, pyramid shaped roofs and pretentious royal blue lettering marking each department of the school. Fifteen and sixteen were a blur of heartbreak and obsession, **** was all I wanted and I nearly shredded my internal organs pining after what I believed would be the most intense and prolific love affair in the history of high school relationships. Sixteen was also the year I was sleeping on my aunt’s floor, eating peanut butter and pretzel sandwiches and wishing I was Bella Swan. At seventeen I developed a taste for whiskey, snuck in snippets through cracked closet doors. It was also during that time that I gave up any hope for a life that didn’t end with fourteen studio albums and 30 plus years of sold out touring. I wrote songs, read East of Eden three times, and felt both genuinely happy and completely alone. I spoke the truth to a void, because he was a good listener. I bought denim jackets and a poster of a rocket ship, and realized that an obsessive need to fill my room with material possessions acquired at various secondhand shops coursed madly through my veins. Now I’m living through eighteen. It’s only been a month and yet it has filled me with such sorrow and confusion. The world is asking me to be the “vs.” between growing up and staying young. I’ve never been one for conflict, and now each morning I’m faced with a boiling hot feud between two separate and arbitrary sides of myself. Eighteen is the year they thrust you into the real world with a handful of “I told you so’s” ,“go get ‘em tiger’s”, and “I believe in you’s”. Eighteen is the year they expect you to make your own decisions and not fuck them up. But at eighteen, all I want to do is sing in my closet and eat peanut butter cookies. At eighteen I can’t stand to look at photos of myself prior to 2003. At eighteen I find myself a victim of somniphobia, sifting through and cataloguing my short life in mental file cabinets. Alphabetical order. Beginning to end. Is this the beginning, or the end?

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Welcome To The Rileys

Sore throat.

I've only recently realized that my insomnia is due to somniphobia, or a fear of sleeping. Last night as I mulled over a set of lyrics I had been working on, I realized that I had been making excuse after excuse all night to keep myself from sleeping. Whether it was some studying I had failed to do, or a song I needed to listen to, the reasons just kept on coming. And by this point it was 1 a.m. and my "eyelids felt like lead garage doors", as the lovely Tegan Quin would say. Now, what are some reasons one would fear such a lovely escape as sleeping?:

-The dreams/nightmares that are inevitable with someone who has such a high wired imagination as I do
-The lack of control one has when asleep. You're unconscious, there's really a limited amount of control you have over your environment
-A distrust of one's subconscious; It is responsible for all the rash judgements and decisions you make, plus the bad habits too!

I could probably think of a lot more, and although that would help in my quest to avoid sleep I don't believe I'll be helping my situation by feeding the flames with fresh sheets of scrumptious notebook paper.

I think of all the phases I've gone through throughout my time here on Earth, this one has proven to be the most self destructive. But then again............I have written some pretty fantastic lyrics, if I may brag. So I'm going to, just this once, go with the flow and see what else this somniphobia can do for me. Perhaps we'll become close friends, and take long strolls through snow covered Montreal in February, sharing dreams of disastrous Valentines days from our past.

Sweet dreams to all you sleepers out there!