Tehvitan Ibele

An Old Saying

Her eyes, normally a shade of peaceful blue, the sort of azure that could capture you according to your will, blazed with a tumultuous crimson that reflected the fire in mine own. To consider this a Mao Dun, a conflict, would be blissfully simplistic--we stood engulfed in flames, a meeting of two unstoppable forces. The space between us appeared infinitesimally small, as if our bodies hurtled hundreds of thousands upon millions of miles toward each other and upon us was the moment precisely before a brilliant impact. We were graceful and massive forces--we were Antigone and Creon poised to strike. The magnitude of our certitude locked against each other, equally powerful, yet in complete opposition. Here we stood in the days of simplicity, inevitably shortened by the wrongs we committed in the name of our beliefs.

Fear

There lives a fear, many-faced, multi-formed within us all that feeds on all fears we possess--a fear that we may become, against our judgment and control, what we fear most.

It may behoove us to desperately wall our experience against our shores, or take our fear as a safeguard, or become it altogether.

However, the sea is wide, coercion is better put to other uses, and becoming it teaches us little of difficulty.

Carefully, we may accept our wickednesses, and choose those which we cannot live without.

Echo

And as I take the steps two by two up the gray walled staircase, walls upon walls of porous gray, plastic to the accidental brush, my echo behind me sounds a chariot's wheels, chasing quicker than I run, walling me in to where I myself confine.

Addiction

Almost five years have passed since the initial release of World of Warcraft. I have played an elemental shaman since the closed beta of the game, to this very day. In this time, I have formed an intimate and devastating relationship with this game--in fact, it would not be fair to call this relationship any less than an addiction. Drawing out the various stigmata associated with the word, one can imagine a multitude of sins for which I must repent, but mostly, my regrets lie with the damage to my spirit and mind. Upon the edge of this deep dark well, I have laid my poetry, my music, my education, my emotion, my humanity. They stand, teetering on the brink of an endless abyss, threatened not with an apocalyptic boom, but with a quiet atrophy, slipping, colorlessly, senselessly, away.

I am young. I know less than I believe I do, yet more than I assume others believe. Yes, humanity is constantly relearning the lessons learned, but I hope there is some sense left in me to give me pause, to cease this unrelenting torrent of vicious repetition. I am young, and I have much to learn.

The true key is balance.

I will fall asleep tonight, with my character imprinted in my eyes,
Saying my goodbyes, and fond farewells,
And tomorrow,
I shall wake up to the first day, in a long long while, awake, as myself.

Medicine

Do you ever...
Yes sir?
Well. Do you ever get a certain feeling...?
As opposed to an uncertain feeling, sir?
No, no, a certain feeling that you understand everything.
No sir.
And that everyone else does not.
Yes sir.
That you can become something more than man?
No sir.
And everyone else can not.
Yes sir.
Do they have pills for that?
Pills for believing oneself to be the Nietzschean Übermensch?
Yeah.
No sir, not yet.

The Fountain

Inspired by a visit to the Trevi Fountain

A young girl, no higher than my hip, pushed past the busy crowd gathered in a morphing semicircle and came to settle underneath the shadow of a marble horse. Mane flowing, eyes wild, the horse eternally reined by his merman master overshadowed the girl’s figure as she eagerly rubbed her bronzed coin. She raised her treasure to meet the sun, the sounds of rushing water bellowing across the silent statues, and for an instant, blinded the cold stern eyes of her onlookers. She brought the coin close to her heart—a smile, a breath. Throwing the coin over her left shoulder, she let her right arm swing by her side until it stopped of its own volition.

 

Touch Touch

He woke up disconnected from the world. He softly scratched his head. Touch. Touch. His mind came into being--his head brought into existence, his face a mirror. Feeling about, touch, touch, he realized the sprawling floor, the desk and the computer. He pushed his palm forward and a window stood pressed against his bones. His eyes, touch, touch, brought a blanket of light to the chill grass, the sprouting weeds. Where he stepped, a path formed, where he breathed, air came, where he stopped, he observed. There is never so lovely a sight as a world still.