Songs of Summer 2012

I present the final playlist -- nine triggers for nine memories.

1. Bad || Tablo ft. Jinsil
2. Off to the Races || Lana del Rey
   
3. Room for Happiness || Kaskade ft. Skylar Grey
   
4. I LOVE YOU || 2NE1
   
5. LLove || Kaskade ft. Haley
6. Your Taste is My Attention || Lydia
   
7. Cafe || BIGBANG
8. Summertime Sadness || Lana del Rey
9. Words || Skylar Grey
   

Steadfast Tin Soldier

He was of tin and steadfast loyalty; she was of paper and ephemeral beauty. Nobody could touch them. Passion had consumed them; fire had swallowed them whole. But nothing burns forever. In the aftermath, she was gone without a trace, save the jewel she once proudly wore, now left behind. He, on the other hand, had been so malleable, so easily deformed by love that when the last embers were finally cooled, all that could be sifted from the ashes was a cold metal heart.

handgun

the very thought of him causes my fingers to curl into
the shape of a gun. it calms me. soothes me, even.
until i realize that two fingers
are pointing
right back
at me.
bang
bang.

Playing with Fire

"she wonders as the flames lick the core -- does the phoenix possess the knowledge that it will be reborn, or does it relive the agony of dying over and over again?"

-- Paralytic (01/09/2011)

Like a moth to the flame, I ran towards the light with no brakes. I'm so angry that I can't even string words together to write a coherent post. Yes, I hate you right now, but I hate myself even more for playing with fire again and again.

Questionable Maintenance

Harry: There are two kinds of women: high maintenance and low maintenance.
Sally: Which one am I?
Harry: You're the worst kind; you're high maintenance but you think you're low maintenance.
Sally: I don't see that.
Harry: You don't see that? Waiter, I'll begin with a house salad, but I don't want the regular dressing. I'll have the balsamic vinegar and oil, but on the side. And then the salmon with the mustard sauce, but I want the mustard sauce on the side. "On the side" is a very big thing for you.
Sally: Well, I just want it the way I want it.
Harry: I know; high maintenance.

-- from When Harry Met Sally (1989)

A month ago, I would have replied without a shred of doubt that I am low maintenance.

But considering how insecure I really am under my stony exterior -- clenched jaw, burning cheeks, complete inability to concentrate are just a few of the symptoms that plague me during something as mundane as waiting for a particular person to reply to my damn message -- I wonder if the crazy possessive monster who demands this and that on a single whim in actuality rests dormant within me.

This kind of thought gives me the creeps.

/end chapter/

The sun had set long ago, abdicating its throne in the sky to the moon. She had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, exhausted from a long day traveling around San Francisco. To keep him awake as he drove us home, her boyfriend and I engaged in a conversation about our experiences growing up in the Bay Area. By chance, we talked about his high school extracurricular activities, when he mentioned that he knew a couple of names from my high school. There were a few that I already knew were our mutual acquaintances. But then there was one name that I probably should have thought of -- but I didn't, and so it came as a complete surprise when I heard it. As he explained that they had been childhood friends, a strange feeling came over me. I couldn't pinpoint quite what it was, but to my surprise, it wasn't a bad feeling, the kind that used to crush my insides like a grape. It was almost like apathy.

When the car came to a stop before my house, he stepped out to help me move things out of the trunk. That was when this dialogue occurred:

S: You want to know a secret, R? I used to have a crush on him.
R: Him? Really? But he's such a derp.
S: I know. I was an idiot.

And that was the end of it.

It was so easy.

Book Report: Throne of Glass

Before Throne of Glass was released on August 7, the last time I had a book release date memorized was the seventh Harry Potter book. How many years ago is that?

There's a reason why this book has been on my radar for the past few years, ever since I began following YA writing/publishing blogs and rediscovered Sarah J. Maas. It's because in its previous incarnation, Queen of Glass ruled Fictionpress. My memory may be faulty, but I recall at one point that it had raked in over tens of thousands reviews for over 60 chapters. These were numbers were so daunting -- I chose not to read Queen of Glass at the time because I KNEW I was going to get sucked into all those chapters and neglect my high school homework entirely (which, admittedly, was already suffering due to my then-obsession with Japanese dramas).

But, even if I had never read Queen of Glass, this was monumental to me in that a Fictionpress writer that I hailed in my youth was making the leap into publishing. I read Fictionpress voraciously during my middle school and early high school years. I admit that I mainly read the ones that had raked in hundreds of reviews. Why? This was my form of quality control. Even then, there were some hugely popular stories that left an overly saccharine taste in my mouth (wallflower-meets-jock trope, anyone?). But then, there were the gems -- the ones that I would stay up all night reading and would force all of my friends to read as well. These were the ones that eventually inspired me to publish on FP. I never reached the upper echelon of Fictionpress fame (Myrika, anyone?), but it was still an unforgettable experience. It was a source of joy all throughout my high school career.

And so, when August 7 came around, I came home from Monterey that afternoon, purchased Throne of Glass for my Kindle, and read the whole book in one evening. This wasn't just about supporting Sarah -- granted, I've followed her blog for a long time and I have little doubt she is probably just as sweet and empathetic in person as she is online. On a bigger scope, I wanted her to succeed because I knew what this would mean to the Fictionpress community.

I've read some Goodreads reviews for the book. Several readers had beef with Caelena -- they said she was unlikeable, a heroine they didn't feel compelled root for. I wonder if they had read the four e-novellas released months prior to Throne of Glass' debut, because although Caelena's arrogance grated on my nerves as well in the first e-novella, by the time I began reading Throne of Glass, Caelena Sardothien was like an old friend -- one that annoyed you at times but you unconditionally accepted as a part of who she was. She may have her flaws, but Caelena is not an unlikeable character. I rooted for her all the way.

The plot is where things maybe didn't quite reach the hype that I had built up for three years inside my head. (Granted, marketing the book as "The Hunger Games meets Game of Thrones" is QUITE a tall order to achieve.) The competition to determine the King's Champion was a little lackluster for me, as I was expecting something along the lines of the violent bloodbath of the Hunger Games. I wanted to see more of Caelena's badassery, scenes where she could finally back-up all of her claims of being the greatest assassin.

The other thing that bothered me may have more to do with my personal reading tastes. I was never an avid fantasy reader, but I was a huge fan of Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet. Probably because Song of the Lioness is the only fantasy series that remains fairly clear in my memory, I found myself constantly comparing the series to Throne of Glass. I'm not sure if the similarities are due to fantasy tropes rather than a direct influence from the former to the latter, but there were quite a few characters and plot points that left me drawing parallels.

The Love Triangle. Although Alanna had quite a few love interests, I would argue that the primary love triangle was between Alanna, George, and Jonathan. With Caelena, it's obvious from the very beginning -- Caelena, Chaol, and Dorian. Jonathan and Dorian are both your dark-haired, blue-eyed, sheltered prince types, but the funny thing is that I rooted for the prince in one series and the underdog in the other. I was not a fan of Dorian -- to me, his character seemed almost underdeveloped, though he had the honor of uttering one of my favorite hilarious lines in the book. Chaol, on the other hand, I grew to be more fond of.

The Royal BFF. Thayet and Nehemia are both something like foreign war princesses with very strong and independent streaks. This meshes well with both Alanna and Caelena's disdain for the simpering ass-kissing of court life.

Those were a few of the ones that stuck out to me. It's not fair of me to judge Throne of Glass against all four Song of the Lioness books though, so I'll refrain from making any more direct comparisons. Overall, Throne of Glass doesn't quite live up to the "Hunger Games meets Game of Thrones" hype (or perhaps this book simply proves what I already knew -- fantasy isn't really my cup of tea), but the heroine Caelena holds a lot of promise for the future. I'll be sticking with her all the way through.

B!tch-Slap to Self

I was literally moments away from turning off the lights and curling into my fetal sleeping position. I was looking through my Facebook page, reading the posts on my wall. And then, it hit me.

Sophelia, what the fucking hell is wrong with you.

You knew this one was different. There was never a question about it. The fact that you managed to churn out six vignettes in a month, when your literary output had diminished to a near drought for almost a year. The numbers don't lie. By the time you publish this post, there will have been only 22 posts written for the year 2012. That's not even a fifth of how much you wrote in 2009. No, the last time you were able to produce so much material was because of your asinine high school infatuation with an idea. It was never about a person. You kept your life so sterilized that all you could do was to feed your erotomanic imagination into creating a person that didn't even exist in real life.

That one that I absolutely forbid you to call "You" again -- when did you ever really interact with that one? You didn't. You magnified every insignificant little word or glance tossed your way and transformed them into epics. You were so enraptured with the romanticized concept of unrequited pining that you ended up writing your own novel inside your head.

And now, let's go back to this one -- the one that has been gnawing away at your conscience for a week. Why the hell has this one tormented you so much? It's because for the first time in your pathetic life, this one was real. This one wrote to you the night you two first met. This one, while undergoing an emotionally draining period, still bothered to ask to meet with you. This one held an umbrella over you under the pouring rain. This one waited outside with you until your relatives came to meet you for dinner.

Your doubts still eat you alive. You question if you are guilty of the same egregious over-analysis that consumed you in high school. You remember that one comment: "I can talk about my life with almost anyone." It rings in your head like a gong. You are not special. You question if you are guilty of creating another fiction -- the idea of person -- inside of your head. How much do you really know about a person that you met merely two weeks ago? You are delusional.

The coward in you clung onto these doubts. Once the seed was planted, the thorny mess began to take hold. You designed a "test" to see if your doubts could be proven. When the results were what you expected, you made your grand declaration that this chapter of Sophelia's perpetually tragic life had come to an end.

Except, you ridiculous ninny, you failed the test yourself. What kind of result were you expecting from him, when you wrote with the thinly veiled implication that you expected to never see each other again? What kind of result were you expecting, when you chose not to keep the conversation alive when the ball was in your court? The truth was that you were afraid. You still are afraid.

"On risque de pleurer un peu si l'on s'est laissé apprivoiser." You've clung onto this mantra for the last six years of your life, but this is the biggest delusion of them all. The sorrow you've bottled inside of you doesn't turn into tears -- it pours out of you in vignettes.

I don't know what to do.

Blind

The Lovers by Rene Magritte (1928)

"So watch as I go back. I just came to say that
you'll never see me again.
This clock is ours now, till morning.
So stay right there in that frame.
This picture is how we speak. You'll never see me again,
'cause I miss you already."

-- "Your Taste is My Attention" by Lydia

Love is blind, says the optimist. Look at the yearning etched in the lines of the cloth, a potency that lies beyond the realm of verbal expression. External appearance is unnecessary. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

Love is blind, says the pessimist. The dishonesty of lovers who think they know each other so well, they've masked themselves in a fabric woven of their own conjurations -- "a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination."

Sometimes I wonder if you were even real. Were you ever there -- did we ever meet -- was it just a dream? Your face has begun to blur. Either I am beginning to forget you... or perhaps you were never really there to begin with. A figment of the imagination. If we passed by each other on the streets, you wouldn't know me. We would be strangers, and everything would be okay again.

Summertime Sadness

"Oh, my God, I feel it in the air

Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare

Honey I'm on fire, I feel it everywhere

Nothing scares me anymore

Kiss me hard before you go
Summertime sadness
I just wanted you to know..."

-- "Summertime Sadness" by Lana del Rey

... that I knew it would end even before the leaves turned to red and gold, before the skies here would be marked with the calls of migratory geese seeking the warmth of paradise.

When I was sixteen and discovered my glorious rocker idol songstress for the first time, there was one thing I didn't understand. When Ren left Nana for Tokyo, why did they let it die without a single word of communication for two years? If their love had been an addiction, one that led her to tattoo his namesake flower on her arm and lock a padlock chain around his neck, why would they quit each other cold turkey? Why did they let it die without a fight?

The truth is that it's easier this way. You will never know how many times I would revise a stupid Facebook message before I would send it to you. You will never know how I would purposely reply to your messages right before I'd go to sleep so that for eight hours I wouldn't have to agonize over your impending response. But you were leaving for Tokyo anyways, decided long before we ever met. I couldn't bear this constant barrage of wavering uncertainty, of not knowing if you had been so friendly to me because it was in your nature or because you felt even a fraction of what I felt for you. And even if I forced the answer out of you, what could I do with it when we were separated by space and time?

That last message I sent to you, I wavered. I could have added one more line. A question. A provoking comment. Anything to continue feeding the fire.

But I didn't. And when you wrote back that casual one-line response, I knew then that I would let the fire die on its own. Ren and Nana were fortuitous to meet again two years after their separation, but I have no delusions that the same will happen to you and me.

Café

"I remember
when you walked through that door
sat down in that chair
the times that we shared
but you ain't here"

-- "Cafe" by BIGBANG

we sat side-by-side at the cafe counter as the typhoon rain poured onto the city streets. you ordered an iced coffee and, ignoring my protests, paid for my black tea. our relationship straddled the line between strangers and acquaintances, but somehow it didn't matter. in the three hours we shared, we talked about our lives in ways that felt as natural as chatter among childhood friends.

fate is a tricky bastard. i knew that i might never see you again. i was leaving for the States the next day, while you were moving to another country by the end of the month. yet our lives had inexplicably collided, not just once but twice. the fact that you lived walking distance away from me in this vast city was almost too much of a coincidence.

it's a pity, perhaps. maybe things would have been different between us if we had met sooner. or perhaps nothing would have changed. all i know is that since we parted ways this evening, the bittersweet taste in my mouth won't go away.