bangkok collage

ravi apparently got inspired by me (imagine that) and made a collage of his first solo trip to bangkok. so sweet it is, no? he's threatened to replace the girl's face with his own so i quickly put it up here before that happens.

never love a wild thing

there is this house
i own this house
but it is not mine
it has been claimed by the wild horses
who wander in and out of it
through the day
as i rest or read
or clean my body
these strange beasts
they come and go
from this house i own
at a will only they comprehend
bringing with them many things
the moors, wind, eyelashes
and i often awake
to find broken glass
glittering in a new sunshine
and the smell of wild flowers
where a mirror once was
their wildness brings them
to my house
their running-free-ness brings them
running to this house
the thing in them that makes them wild horses
which is not the fact that they are horses
who were born in the wild
some wild horses are more wild horse than others
it is them
the ones with the wild horse spirit inside them
that would have made them wild horses
even if they weren’t
even if they were blind owls
that is what brings them to my house
in their blindness, even, seeking it out
and slamming their heads against the windows
over and over and over
until they are broken
and can never be closed again




"Never love a wild thing... you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up... If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

— Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

four by six

i bought this digital photo frame
and it's a funny thing
now i have photo-frame ADD
i keep the photos on slide show
because i can't even decide which memory to value the most
sometimes i hate convenience

nako and me

i used to dislike all cats until i met nako.
we have a strange relationship.

she hides behind tables and watches me suspiciously.



uses my bag as her throne.



and today she decided to jump on my laptop and help me edit my manuscript.



she's a strange cat, naks, but i think she has a future in publishing.

Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more) - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read’.
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.


I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

one is the idol, the other the hymn

in ladakh, no matter where you want to go, even if it's at a low altitude, you always have to climb to a really great height and then come all the way down. the mountains make you climb them. and not just climb them but go all the way into them, get lost in them, wander in what seems like circles, see the roads you just crossed look like nothing but thin wrist slashes. and the mountains change color, and shape, and form. they go from brown to green to purple, flat to rounded to steep, sandy to rocky to landslide-any-second-now-y. and no matter how long you climb, there's always that one mountain peak way in the distance, standing tall with snow on it so white it's as if no one's ever touched it, and it seems to say, you'll be climbing all your life, you will. and you want to climb all your life. and one day, early at five am in the mountains, on the way to a lake that looks like someone polished the sky and laid it on the ground, with the moon on one side and the sun on another, someone turned on radiohead. and not just radiohead, but ok computer, radiohead. so i prepped myself for all the jaded non-reactionism i have with ok computer. i couldn't even remember the last time i had listened to or been affected by ok computer. those days of affection were gone.



but i obviously underestimated the mountains. because something happened in the mountains that morning. the song started. everyone fell silent (which really means something with us). three of us started singing along. the mountains stood on the sides and watched. and pressed the song like a silver fern into our mind. and deeper and deeper. gently. and we remembered all the words. we sang like we were listening to the song for the first time. the goosebumps came out under our fleece jackets. and we whispered the words. and the mountains listened and echoed them back to us. gently. i knew then i'll love them forever. the mountains and radiohead. together, they could start a fucking religion.

lazer eyes can dance all night

i really do love the idea of words + illustration combined. and i really do love dog hates me and exploding dog (different sites, same author). they're like the little prince of the blog world. they're the digital version of that book that you can open to any page and you read any line and it makes you go, "o i was just thinking about that!" they're every lesson i've ever learnt in life condensed into a single or three-frame illustration. they're every person i've ever met depicted as a robotic creature or barnyard animal. it's how i wish i drew and wrote and combined colors and thought about life. o i really do love sam brown.

general status update

i installed google analytics
because of latent peer pressure
from all the blogs i visited
that took longer to load
because their google analytics was loading.
my statistics are droopy
and no figure on it
no matter what its category
exceeds ten.
but someone visited me from germany
and brazil
brazil! i said, when i saw it
and jumped for joy!
not really
i just sort of shifted in my seat
and gave the kind of smile
that doesn't travel from your
mind to your mouth
i'd like to visit brazil someday
but it would be one of
the last places on my list
someone also visited me from amritser
in amritser, you want to have a bath
the minute you step out from your bath
the rooms smell like carcass
and golden temple prasad is yum
all i know about brazil is the wax job
which may be about as brazilian
as french fries are french
i read an article about sushma reddy
going to a french restaurant
and asking for vegetarian food
and they gave her french fries
ha! i laughed in my head
when i read it
she didn't seem to get the joke,
though.
would my site stats look better
if i put up pictures of sushma reddy?
would i be compromising my integrity?
i think i would be compromising my integrity
i think i should uninstall google analytics
before it makes me compromise my integrity
i was quite happy being droopy
before it came along
but i like seeing the map
like a coloring book
you are filling by being here
ooh look
germany is pale green!
*jump*