Inamorata

Months ago, I'd downloaded Inamorata by Megan Chance--a free book that I'd completely forgotten about. As I looked through my Kindle for a book to read on the plane, I had no recollection of the book summary--or even what had compelled me to download the book in the first place.

I haven't gone back to read the Amazon summary that must have initially hooked my interest, but Inamorata possesses certain qualities that I can easily see would have drawn my attention. For starters, it has a darker paranormal element--not the sort that triggered the Twilight paranormal romance craze years ago, but more menacing and nightmarish. Moreover, the story takes place in late 1800s Venice and centers around the artist/writer/musician culture in Europe at that time--including allusions to famous artists and writers of the past.

I don't want to get too specific about what this book is about, but as I tend to write these book report posts to digest what I've read, there are certain elements I want to stew over.

The aspect of this book that really struck me (and may not impact others the same way) was its premise that many of the "greats"--Schumann, Byron, Canaletto--traded their souls to a succubus for fame. The succubus would become a powerful muse, and these men would produce their greatest masterpiece--the magnum opus that would immortalize their legacy, that people would remember them for in years to come--and then succumb to madness in turn.

Anyone who creates probably shares the same desire to some extent--to be immortalized in their work. The question that the book raises is, how far would you go to achieve that end? Would you make that pact with the succubus, knowing that you will produce your greatest work and then waste away in madness after?

By the time I finished the book, the sky had already begun to darken outside. The clouds over the Las Vegas desert were streaked a brilliant, bloody red as the last vestiges of daylight slinked away for cover behind the mountains. For a long time, I gazed out the airplane window and absently admired the colors. I don't know what I would do if faced with the temptation of immortalized fame, but I do know one thing. I know the madness that only a muse can induce. I still remember what happens when your creativity proliferates uncontrollably under the fever of inspiration, infected by the singular source of all your greatest highs and lows.

The year is coming to an end, and my bones can already feel the changes looming in the horizon. December has always been a time of retrospection. I've lost track of how many years have passed since the genesis of Heart & Crossbones, and I couldn't be bothered to calculate them now. But the sun is setting now. I haven't felt the same cancerous madness in years, and a part of me believes that I will never experience it again. But there are others in my life now--perhaps ones who will eventually inspire my words. As I stand on the precipice, I wonder if it is time to fall. I wonder if the sun has finally set on You.

Extinction of a Personal History

 "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

For one reason or another, I wandered back to Xanga today and discovered that the site is under major construction. I couldn't even find a single trace of the morbid relic from my dark middle school years, and at a glance, it didn't seem like anyone else's teenage testaments existed anymore either. Or at least, there was no way for me to access them, anyways.

(Side note: I still can't believe I'm 23. Ten years ago on this day, I'd just barely become a teenager. Like, what.)

Is it weird that I feel vaguely sad about this? Not that I ever planned on returning to that weblog platform again, but somehow it used to feel permanent--as in, I could go back to that site decades later and laugh at how crazy-emo-stupid I used to be. I couldn't explain how pixels and computer script work to you to save my life, but that little digital corner of the Internet housed a piece of the person I once was, and it's not hard for me to see how it influenced who I am today.

After reading that last sentence, you're probably thinking, What the fuck Sophelia... that's some serious cheesin' right there. But a few things happened in April (especially one incident that left me dumbfounded at its sickening irony) that made me reflect on certain past incidents with a more objective eye. In particular, I started thinking about this blog's genesis. And really, it all started with Xanga. If I had never made that crazy-emo-stupid Xanga, I may never have started blogging. If I had never written those crazy-emo-stupid posts, The Anathema would never have left those witty comments and the seed would never have germinated, growing into the thorny nest of brambles that eventually swallowed my naivete whole.

I might have sounded incredibly bitter just now, but in reflecting these past few weeks, I'm really not. It has been five years since I turned 18 and graduated from high school. No denial here: I used to be bitter. But I wouldn't want anyone to hold me accountable for the crap I did when I was at age 18; I'd like to think we've all grown up into better people who'd probably roll our eyes at what little shits we used to be.

For a long time, I latched onto anger because it was the easiest emotion to deal with. One thing I've learned in the last five years is that anger hurts less than sorrow. Anger directs the negative energy away from you. Sorrow causes you to dwell within it. And with this knowledge, I traced back through everything that had happened with The Anathema, and I realized just how much I relied on anger to distract myself from sorrow, and just how blindly self-centered I'd been. Fifteen-year-old Sophelia thought she'd been soooooo obvious. Twenty-three-year-old Sophelia looks back and thinks, You must be DELUSIONAL if you think anyone else would read THAT much into every insignificant little thing you timidly tried to convey, you oblivious twat.

I mentioned The Anathema to a college friend last autumn, and they were a bit stupefied to hear that I hadn't completely trashed all of the memories from my head. Quite possibly, they were politely masking a tempered rendition of my reaction to Love in the Time of Cholera's obsessive Florentino Ariza. But the truth of the matter is that, as pathetic as it sounds, The Anathema will probably never leave me. Love or hate, The Anathema breathed life into my first words as a writer, as the entity named Sophelia Lee. The whole affair is so deeply ingrained in my history, it is impossible to ever extract this thread from my past without unraveling the entire fabric of who I am now.

sacrifice to the muse

i read a free verse memoir recently
"you remind me of you" by eireann corrigan

i've been wondering something recently

why i don't write vignettes anymore.

if you peruse through everything i wrote in the first incarnation of this blog
"Heart & Crossbones"
nearly everything was cryptic and lyrical

the memoir i read, it reminded me not of you,
but of me
if i extracted all of those pretty words
could i also publish a 123-page memoir?

there have been spurts of creative power here and there in recent years
but they've all been induced by emotional turmoil
that came and went like a seasonal storm
but nothing like what you triggered
because your power over me could move the tides

a part of me fears
that those words
have now run dry

almost as if i need to lay out my heart at the altar,
to keep my muse satisfied.

/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.

Space Bound

"I'm a space bound rocket ship and your heart's the moon
And I'm aiming right at you"

The only reason I thought of you recently is not because I wonder what you are doing anymore. You no longer pepper my daily thoughts, adding the artificial spice to a mundane life. No, the only reason you slipped into my consciousness like ghostly curls of smoke is that I still don't really know the answer. All I know is that eventually, your presence eroded away from me.

I regarded her obsession with Twilight with patient tolerance and mild amusement. I held my tongue. I used to be like her, you know. I believed that among the 7 billion people in this world, I was meant to find the one. When we had our debate that night, I couldn't help but feel I was arguing with my younger self.

"Nobody knows me I'm cold
Walk down this road all alone
It's no one's fault but my own
It's the path I've chosen to go
Frozen as snow I show no emotion whatsoever so"

I don't know when or why I became so cold. Perhaps my silence all those years chained to you had caused me to freeze.

"I burn in degrees Kelvin for you," I once wrote. Maybe I wasn't the star. I was the rocket ship, and your heart was the moon. My aim never wavered all those years, but it didn't matter. Once the flame sputtered out, I was trapped in the coldness of space. Somewhere between you and the girl I had once been.

-- "Space Bound" by Eminem

The Lost Answers

Jay Chou's CD is on replay in the kitchen boombox. My mom, in an attempt to teach me Chinese, made me read over a bunch of the Chinese lyrics with her. When she made me read the lyrics for "Orange Jasmine (Qi Li Xiang)", it triggered a flashback to middle school.

I just remembered.

Was it sixth grade when it happened? When word got around to me that you were planning to ask me to marry you? On one knee and all that jazz?

What I still want to know is -- why? Was that your idea of a good joke? I barely talked to you. Hell, I might have even hated your guts at the time, though I'm not entirely sure anymore. I still remember you made the mistake earlier that year of telling someone that I was ugly -- she happened to be my friend, you know. And weren't you in love with that other girl at the time, anyways? Why on earth would you waste your time with me, shoving me under the same spotlight that followed you wherever you went?

I don't really remember what happened that day. I'm pretty sure I probably ran away and hid as soon as I found out.

That's probably the closest I ever got to being the center of gossip.

Here's another unsolved mystery -- who was planning to ask me to Homecoming freshman year? I never found out. I had run into Honeybee one day -- we didn't talk often, but we were pretty good friends back in middle school. She was the one who told me. She wasn't in my inner circle of friends at the time though, which means either everybody knew by that point, or that it was someone she was close to -- which by default would have meant I didn't know him very well.

In truth, maybe it's a good thing whoever it was chickened out. I was still so enamored of the Prince then.

Oh my god, all the memories are flooding back now.

The Prince. I wonder if he knows that I had a crush on him for almost three years. I was so stinking obvious too. The way I kept IMing him all the time. I remember how I was flipping through the Michael's catalog and found "a sign" -- his name and mine on the sample picture for some wedding placecard. How often does my name appear on ANYTHING? I look at those personalized magnets and keychain souvenirs only to laugh and see if they've gotten my name. (It's only happened once.) It had to be a sign. I cut out that little picture and pasted it in my diary. "Prince and Sophelia." Excuse me while I go throw up.

What about when I was in, what, first grade? Magenta and I were such good friends back then -- strange to think of that now, isn't it? Her little brother wanted to marry me. He was still in pre-school. I got tricked into going to their house. When I walked in, their piano, which could be programmed to play by itself, started playing the wedding march. Magenta went down the living room throwing flower petals. Her brother held a ring and wanted to put it on my finger. I hid my face behind my stuffed cat Boots and wanted to cry.

And yes, my thoughts turn to you, too. I've changed, you know. Steel knives, ice shards. I've gotten colder and harder, this diamond that was once a lump of coal, burning all that time just for you. It was the only way I could move on.

I think back to all those lost answers. We'll never know the truth, will we? You're never going to know what I thought of you all those years, and I'm never going to know why you initiated that contact between us and started it all. Maybe if you had never bothered, I wouldn't have hardened like this.

But no. If none of it had never happened, this blog would never have existed.

Avril Lavigne: My Life's Soundtrack

listening to old-school Avril brings back so many memories, precisely because so much of my childhood and adolescence is marked not in years but in songs.

"Unwanted" for when i found out Iris died -- the first and only time i ever cried for someone's passing.

"Anything but Ordinary' for those summer days of writing silly song-fics with P in the Stanford quads.

"Sk8er Boi" for the first fictional piece i ever created, the one that years later inspired EP.

"I'm with You" for the One who Got Away.

right now i'm listening to "Nobody's Home" and those chorus girl "oh oh she's lost inside she's lost inside oh oh" refrains make me remember when i was lean and sun-kissed, bronzed from playing tennis 2.5 hours per day and head over heels for the older boy who i looked up to and idolized, who made my heart convulse when he confided to me during one of our online conversations that i was one of the few people he could tell anything to. (and now that i think about it, i wasn't as clever at hiding it as i originally thought. oh, the embarrassment of youth.)

i remember that one xanga post i wrote where i listed 25 strings of lyrics from 25 songs and held a contest to see who could recognize the most songs. he got first place. you got second place. you recognized the lyrics... she's lost inside she's lost inside oh oh.

that was how you reentered into my life, you know. back when i actually let people read my writing publicly, there you were leaving witty comments here and there, like some woodpecker pecking holes into the wall between us -- crumbling the barrier, so to speak. and now that i'm thinking about this for the first time in years, i don't even know what on earth made you decide to comment in the first place as if we were old friends. we never talked before then. we were two planets on our predestined orbits, nodding in acknowledgment as we passed on by and nothing more.

i wonder why you even bothered.

la pluie violet

"A kiss in the mouth can become a kiss on the mouth. A hand on a shoulder can become a hand on the hips. A laugh on his lips can become a moan on mine. The moments in between these are often difficult to gauge, difficult to partition and subdivide. Time refuses to be translated into a tangible thing, time without a number or an ordinal assigned to it, is often said to be 'lost.' In a city that always looks better in a memory, time lost can make the night seem eternal and full of stars."

-- The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

---

"I only want to see you, only want to see you in the purple rain."

You were standing on the white ceramic tiles of my bathroom floor, your eyes glancing up at the mirror to see my startled reflection staring back. It had been a year since I last saw you. I have dreamt of this moment a million times -- my favorite was the one where I'd make my grand entrance at the annual New Year's Eve party at Rachelle's place and nobody, not even you, would be able to keep their eyes off of me, entranced by how much I'd changed and how beautiful I'd become -- but I'd never imagined that I'd see you standing in my own house, Narcissus before the bathroom mirror with the same wild tangle of hair and look of self-induced lust, a magnetism that could both attract and repel at once.

I didn't want you to look at me. Not yet. My transformation was incomplete; my hair was still only partially tamed, my body still being whittled down, my face still marked with unhealed incisions. I still looked like the same person we both once knew and both wanted to forget.

Mila, I was waiting to hear you say, but you didn't speak.

Time diffused, and this time we were in the same room again, separated by a pane of glass. I could hear the shower water running, feel the steam scurrying up the glass in wispy tail-like curls. The fog shrouded us -- this way, we could see without seeing, look without looking, watch without watching. I could see the haze of your body's movements, unpeeling the layers one by one until the petals of fabric lay at your feet like the withering of the Beast's enchanted rose. But whose death had come? Were you the Beast, or was I?

Everything was purple all around me. Violets, lavender, irises engulfed the room in a cloud of perfume as you walked under the water and let it drench your skin. The scent of the flowers rooted into your nestle of hair, entwining with the rising steam that climbed higher and higher. I could feel your eyes tracing my movements through the fogged glass as I let the petals unfurl, one by one until I was as bare and vulnerable as I had once allowed myself to be before you. The water drummed across my shoulders like fingertips, trailing down my back in a lazy trickle. Bottles and bottles of fragmented body wash stood aligned on the ceramic tiles, glass soldiers each uniformed in a varying shade of purple. I pressed the cool gel against the heat of bare skin, watched the translucent purple effervesce, bubbling and slipping away like a tumble of ephemeral pearls.

For a moment, you had reeled me in again -- without even saying a word, without even a single touch, you had caught me in your fist like a flopping, gasping fish.

And when I woke up from this dream, I hated you all over again.

Beast

if i ever date a boy
i want him to take me to the theater

not the movies

a theater with red velvet seats
gilded arches of swan necks lifting the
stardusted ceiling to the moon and the stars
with divas draped in fabrics and jewels in all the colors
you'd find at the marché de plein air
in the crates of fresh fruit, ripened, glistening --

my mouth waters

with dashing baritones -- the vibrato throbbing
in unison with the pulsating red rivers
flowing under my prickling skin
i want to take that deep, lulling voice
wrap it around my bare shoulders on a summer night


that's what i was thinking last night
as i sat on the balcony
watching the beauty fall for the beast
and as the enchanting little girl beside me
strummed arpeggios across my heart strings
with her staccato giggles and allegretto chatter
and i thought of him -- that one who sits beside me in class every day
-- an idle, subconscious thought --

but then you came back to me that night
and as i awoke from that wretched dream
all my memories of you
poured down like a torrential rain storm
drowning within me

and though i know my heart has enough love
for a child of my own
i don't know if
i can ever learn to open myself up again

The Setting Sun

Some days, I regret it. I regret that it ever happened, the way I let myself become diseased and mutilated by this virus that is paradoxically so intimately tied to human life. But then, there are those days when I revisit those vignettes and letters I once wrote to you (yes, you are no longer worthy of the capital Y -- disregarding the contemplative Why) and when I see those pretty words strung into lovelorn sentences, I can't help but think of a dazzling jeweled choker baring its diamond teeth around a fragile neck and then I wonder where all my beautiful words have gone, as if you sucked them dry and left me with nothing.

Crown

You made the tiniest crown out of rubies and silver with dewdrops of gold, handed it to me on black velvet with a modest shrug. The best I could do. You bent down so I could place my hands 'round your neck, in a gesture neither one of us would have done in a different where, a different when.

Someday, the sun will rise. I'll wake up before the rest of the world, collecting the drops of gold resting on the tips of Earth's fluttering viridian eyelashes. I'll pull wreaths of silver from the clouded sky, listen to them rustle like wind chimes. But that's all I can do for now. Someday, the rubies will come. They'll bloom inside the tulip's cup of petals like gemstone Thumbelinas dreaming of fairy princes riding on bumblebees. Someday I'll find the heart to fashion you a crown of the Earth, with all the gold and silver and rubies of the world, and hang it across the velvet night sky and declare it to the gods.

But that someday is not today.

Dreamcatcher

I woke up this morning and saw You caught in my dreamcatcher, squirming like a fly gasping on a spider's web. I don't know why You were poking your nose in my vespertine musings. I don't know why You decided to rear your ugly head in my sleep when you already seem to intuitively know that I can't look at you anymore.

Starlight

"Perhaps... I was a throwback, a small distant meteorite that died several hundred years ago and now lived only by virtue of the light that speeds through space at too great a pace to realize that its source has become a piece of lead."

-- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

My life changed one year ago. One year and five days ago, I learned not to wish upon a falling star. The light of You blinded me from everything, until the day I hurtled into the Earth and saw the truth. That the You I once knew had already incinerated, slipped through my fingers like cosmic ashes.

Is it too late to find ourselves again?

Open your eyes. Can You see me, waiting in the dark for You once again?

Correspondence

You,

I told myself to stop writing to You because I need to convince myself that I don't care. But I'll share something anyway.

I used to think I was trapped. Stuck in a future all neatly shaped by society's cookie cutter. Because really, all the laws and rules and morals we create mean nothing. We have problems with the economy because we created the concept of currency in the first place. We find ourselves in conflict with what is true justice because we make all these rules in the first place. Society creates all the rules, and if you don't follow them, bye bye.

Some hated studying existentialism. I loved it. Everything I had already thought of was neatly explained by Sartre and Camus. But existentialism taught me one more thing. I own my fate. Ultimately, I decide if I want to live my cookie-cutter life. I could just as easily drop out of college, volunteer for two years in Africa, then travel around the world as a free-lance writer. It all depends if I want to be responsible for what happens (such as being disowned by my parents).

So why give a fuck about the ass-kissers? With the attitude he has, he'd probably piss off more people than he can suck up to. I could care less where he is the next four years because whatever college he attends guarantees nothing. For all I know, he could decide to major in women studies and spend the rest of his life teaching women studies. Nothing wrong with women studies, but not exactly a glamorous career, is it?

Hell, just play the game. Go to school, get a job, make some money, then do what You want. Buy a ship and become a pirate. Hell, be Bruce Wayne and buy a Batmobile and all those fancy gadgets. You have to know the rules before You can break them.

Chances are You won't ever read this, which is why I bothered to write in the first place. And if You do, congratulations. Now You know what's been going on the last two years, and unfortunately, I am tired of doing this.

Cheers,
Sophelia

The Truth

I don't think I have crazier dreams than anyone else. I think I just remember them better after I wake up than most people.

We were at Normandy. I have never set foot across the Atlantic in my life, but I suppose it would be as beautiful as I imagined. The ocean, the ocean. The beach of blood. A friend of Mme. M owned a chateau that overlooked the sea, and so Mme. brought us to the white sand castle to stay as honored guests. Nearly all the walls were built from panels of glass. It felt as if we were walking through crystals, living inside a glass prism. We were in one of the sun-drenched rooms with a view of the ocean, sprawled across the white sandy carpet with our books and papers.

I wish(ed) you would look at me. But I don't think you ever did.

Oh, did I wake up yet? I don't think this is only a dream.

Nocturne

A girl's love does not start with the Porsche he drives or the Armani clothes that he wears but when that person starts to look pitiful.

-- from Mana by Vin Lee

This blog is almost two years old. Funny how so little has changed. The entries still lament of unrequited yearning. My running theme, I suppose. I laugh when I wonder if there is anybody else who stupidly clings onto the same obsession for two years. Or if there is anybody else who latches on for two years and refuses to let go.

But two years would be simplifying the story. The story began the first day we met. Even I don't remember how long ago that had been, but to a degree, the fascination has always been there.

In essence, Heart & Crossbones is a love letter that never reached its recipient. It probably never will. Maybe I will tell the story one day when I can look back upon this and laugh.

Or maybe not.
I thought this was hilarious.

Salt on a Wound

OLIVIA - Rain; Trinka Trinka

-----------------------
Hey You

Don't flatter yourself

Saying we're done would be nice. Clean and cute. Romantic, no?

But nothing can be "done" if it had never began, after all.

-----------------------

Allegory

Once upon a time, they called her Heartless. She denounced love as a chemical reaction, as meaningless as the water that flowed from her tear ducts. Absorbed in her own works of art, she neglected and dutifully avoided participating in the tangled game of romance. And yet, while her art was beautifully adorned with technical and artistic mastery, it was cold and statuesque, lacking the vitality and mortality of life.

When Catalyst surfaced into view, portfolio of his own art in hand, the reaction that had been slowly churning began to ignite. Awed by the earthen beauty of Catalyst's work - the very quality she lacked - she was swept into the illusion that Catalyst would become the muse, the breath of life that she needed. Inspired, she created a series of masterpieces, each one bubbling livelier than before. The caged flower began to unfurl, the spikes of green slowly exposing the pink flesh beneath.

But the Catalyst she had created in her mind was as lifeless and unattainable as the cold flawlessness that had defined her past. While her output increased dramatically, his diminshed softly until nothing was left, save the past. Catalyst did not care for art and certainly did not care for someone without a heart.

When her illusion shattered, the outpour of her work accelerated frantically, maddeningly. She sought to relieve the devastation and misery, but nothing she created could exhaust the draining burden she carried in -- what? Her heart? She sought for life and has found it in the ripened flesh of the blood-red flower. The excruciating agony Catalyst had left is far from cold and lifeless. The searing pain bleeds and the wound hurts to touch - a reminder that she is still alive.

And this is the story of Heart & Crossbones.

Dear You

Nostalgia and I don't get along. He pours salt on a wound I'd much rather forget, and so I am sitting here thinking about You when I should be doing something productive. Funny isn't, how You and I never get anything productive done. There's always another day, another tomorrow, and then you turn around and see the hourglass, with each grain trickling down to join the ever-growing sand dune at the bottom.

So I had a brilliant idea. Instead of playing this game of Cat and Mouse, which we are such experts at, we can finally put some use to the nonsensical metaphors and obtuse obscurity. And write a book.

How to Scare the Shit Out of Everyone By Writing About Your Crazy Psychotic Dreams: For Dummies

How to Elongate a Simple 'That Bitch Broke My Heart' into Thirteen Lines: For Dummies

How to Use Every Possible Synonym for Red to Describe 'Blood': For Dummies

How to Profess Your Misery Into Obscure Poetry : For Dummies

How to Write to An Undefined 'You' For the Sake of Anonymity: For Dummies

and finally

How to Dissect Every Word and Line in Hopes of Finding a Hidden Meaning: For You.