"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