No Time To Stop, by pinkparis1233

I see songs in colour and line. This might sound strange but that is one of the many ways I experience music: I visualize it involuntarily. As soon as it fills my ears, it fills my head with tinted pulses and waves and I revel in the sensory experience no matter where I am – whether on a train, walking on the street or at my desk at work pretending to be very busy and important. Sometimes, when a song is just that good, I have to stop what I’m doing altogether – distracted beyond all pretense – and just sit there with a glazed look in my eyes, simply appreciating.

This song, by the Cardigans, is all dark blues fading into black, like a night sky. It is definitely a night song – I can’t listen to it during the day, it wouldn’t feel right. It’s coy, but bold, but also understated. I love the well-placed echoes; the pureness of the vocals against the slightly grungy music. Here’s my take on it.

Photo by Nicola Bailey Photography. www.nicolabailey.com

When she spoke, her words seemed to be coming from another time and place, as if she was shouting to be heard from a distant room, and we strained our ears, desperate to catch every syllable. She spoke of the sea and in my eyes she swam with the colours of the sunset and her voice rippled across the room, splashing intimately against our ears. I sat enraptured in the semi-darkness…

-       Written on the train, Sat 21 May, 2011

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I’ve spent months trying to put Candy Royalle on a page and I have to admit – it has been harder than I thought. This strikes me as odd, because I don’t usually write like this. When I’m inspired, the writing usually comes in torrents and my fingers own the keyboard, almost as if they know what to say before my brain registers the thought.

And I have written about her – reams, actually. Disjointed paragraphs in that book and the other, even on my phone – all over the place really. Tackling a hundred different ideas and sensations that never really came together into one cohesive thought process. So here’s take number umpteen.

*

“I will her to want it all”, Candy admits from the stage, half singing, half speaking, staring directly into the collective gaze of her audience.

I drink in the tone of her voice, the sensuousness of her language and try to close my mouth, aware of the cameras deftly roving the crowd at intervals. I don’t want to be caught on screen with my jaw unhinged, but quite truthfully, that is how I feel on this late week night, sitting in this cosy pub enclosure together with a handful of people, watching this otherworldly poetess speak about love, sex, anger and politics.

This is the second time I’m seeing Candy Royalle on the stage.

The first was at a more public gathering, at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. I had seen her speak that same morning with a group of other poets, writers and artists who were using their work to inspire positive social change – a talk I enjoyed enough to want to know more about each of the speakers. So when I saw that most of them were performing that evening at a session of performance poetry, I thought ‘why not’. I had never seen performance poetry before and while I had a sneaking suspicion that I would find it pretentious or silly or downright depressing or all of the above, nevertheless, I figured there should be a first time for everything and decided to go along.

I’m not sure what gave me that first negative impression of performance poetry. I am a lover of language and I enjoy poetry even though it’s not usually part of my typical reading list. For whatever reason though, I had this picture in my head of self-proclaimed ‘poets’ standing on a dim stage with bits of paper in their hands, monologuing at length about their tortured feelings and depressing experiences, beating at their breasts while we sat in the audience trying to stifle our yawns.

So yes. The first time I saw Candy Royalle on the stage, I went with the eyes, ears and mind of a skeptic.

The poets who performed before her pleasantly surprised me – I marveled at their clever witticisms and wordplay and laughed at their impressions. I was enjoying myself. Candy was one of the last to perform. She had already intrigued me that morning – from her appearance, to her direct introduction of herself as a queer Arab woman, to the gentle huskiness of her voice, to her opinions on revolution and social change, to an excerpt of one of her poems that she had briefly performed.

Honestly, I don’t remember much about her performance that night – in that, I don’t remember what her poems were about, save for one which was a storytelling about a marijuana-laced conversation with Rastafarian on a beach somewhere. She said something about the colours of the sunset. Or was it the sunrise? I only have the vaguest impressions of the actual poetry. But what I do remember are the sensations that I felt watching her perform. I remember the array of emotions she bared to us, her audience, while she was up there; I remember feeling caught up to the extent that I’m pretty sure I was sitting at the edge of my seat, straining to be somehow more involved. I am also sure I wasn’t the only one who felt this way: when she told the audience that she’d always wanted to make an entire room howl like wolves, the entire room launched into a baying that would have made people outside stop in their tracks and wonder what on earth was going on in that darkened, curtained room.

On the train ride home that night, I pulled out the notebook I carry everywhere with me and wrote feverishly in it, about nothing and everything, simply inspired to write. Her performance made me think for days – not so much because of what she said, but how she said it, and my consequent reaction to it.

I have always thought of poetry as something that was meant to be written, and if read out, then read out from the page. I have thought, to understand poetry, you must understand how it’s been written – the placement of each word on the page, the breakages of each line. You must have it there, in front of you, to be able to go back, refer and study.

I could never read poetry quickly. It was always an effort to read – an effort I usually enjoyed, but an effort nonetheless. I had to think about what each line meant, and what it all meant as a whole. I do appreciate good poetry I think – although everyone has a different opinion of what makes ‘good’ poetry. Still, I find that poetry in general is quite difficult to understand. I certainly don’t claim to understand everything I have read but I’ve always been a little skeptical of poetry that was too enigmatic to be made sense of. Words can sound very pretty strung together in mysterious ways, but if it doesn’t make sense to me, then I cannot take anything from it. I can appreciate that it sounds very nice and sophisticated, but it will always have that cold, empty, meaningless ring to it. Of course, this is purely my personal point of view. To me, writing is about simplicity. Simplicity of language, simplicity of meaning. A sentence simply put can still be beautifully put, and render me to tears in a way that fancy, flowery language could never do.

So if poetry on the page was a hard sell for me, performance poetry was even more of one.

Watching Candy Royalle perform however, I had a revelation. For the first time, I saw poetry as something immediate and sensory. Something that I didn’t have to labour over to make sense of, but something that I could simply experience and drink in. Snatches of language that I could grab and savour at random, but then let go until the next one came along to be savoured alike. I didn’t have to have it there in front of me, mapped out, with notes on the margin. I could just appreciate it in that moment.

I have to admit though – going to see Candy perform a second time, I was nervous. Between that first time and this second time, I had not only exhausted all thought about written and performed poetry but I had also met her, knowing I wanted to write about her but feeling I needed to know more about this enigmatic persona. I wrote copious notes from our meeting but am reluctant to include that analysis here; to break her down according to my impressions of her personality and motivations. I will say that she was as alluring in person and she is on stage, as unabashedly vocal about her opinions on any issue she feels deeply about, and driven by a passion for language and speaking out that I was able to connect with on a personal level.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t escape the fact that I was genuinely nervous that night at the pub as I settled down in my seat and prepared myself for her performance. I worried that I had perhaps romanticized that first performance in my head too much – a tendency I will admit I am often guilty of – and that the sheer novelty of it being gone would take away that excitement I felt on that first night.

I needn’t have worried. As soon as she stepped onto that little platform holding a glass of wine and a sheaf of papers containing new, hitherto unperformed material, she owned the room. She sang more this time, her deep but strangely sweet vocals burgeoning to reach our ears before trailing off as she started to tell us her stories. I’m not sure if it was the setting or purely her talent or perhaps a mix of both, but I felt as if I were privy to the most intimate of conversations. The only way to tell the time passing was the dipping and swirling of the papers in her hand which would drop one by one, scarcely looked at, as she continued to speak to us and with us.

And this time, knowing in some ways what to expect, I was able to appreciate her poetry more, revel in the beauty of her language and take away more than simply sensory impressions of the performance. It was almost as if I had learned a new way of hearing and listening.

Either way, I ducked out into the cool night after her performance as enthralled as that first night, as restlessly inspired.

*

So why the delay then, in writing this?

It should have struck me earlier but for the life of me, I couldn’t put my finger on it until now. It’s only just dawned on me that I am attempting the nigh impossible. Candy Royalle is not meant for the page: She is meant to be seen in the most immediate sense and shared and experienced. Just like her poetry.

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When it was time for her to go, we cried for more and she smiled, and complied. A few more minutes, she said, eager as us to extend this magic pocket of time in which we crowded each others’ space. A deep whooshing intake of her breath made us collectively hold ours as if to give her all she needed, and then she began again. We grabbed at the energy she threw at us in handfuls, mouthfuls, earfuls, greedy and cheering for more, but soon, our time was over. With a slow smile of thanks to our grateful noise, she left.

-       Written on the train, Sat 21 May, 2011

http://weheartit.com/entry/13078125

Whenever I hear this song I think of the sea. I’m not sure why, but there’s a sea-like quality in the songs and lyrics; the way he talks about lust and love and dreaming. Perhaps it’s simply the word ‘crash’. I don’t know. Either way, I love it, and thought I’d give it a shot. Dave Matthews, thanks for the music.

from http://butterflycry-.tumblr.com/

There’s just something about Maroon 5 – I’ve always loved their sound and admire how they manage to be one of the few ‘pop’ bands out there with real soul. Their melodies and lyrics are usually extremely vivid: when I listen to their songs I always see something in my mind – certain situations or moments that the lyrics coax into my mind, no matter how occupied I am. It’s almost as if I am watching a music video that was never made.

Cool these engines, calm these jets, I ask you how hot can it get,
And as you wipe of beads of sweat slowly you say, “I’m not there yet”. 

This song in particular has always held a fascination for me. That lazy guitar at the start instantly makes me think of sunset on a hot, sultry, summer day. I tried to echo that same lazy sultriness in the main melody of the song as well as in the backing vocals, which were probably my favourite part of the song to sing.

Enjoy!

With all the stubbornness of a typical adolescent, I would pep-talk myself into not believing them and turn up the music louder as I sang into the night each night. This has been my usual practice from before I can remember. I sing all the time — in the car, in the shower, in my room each night — anywhere I feel comfortable and at ease. Most of the time, it’s an unconscious compulsion – I barely notice that I do it. In public, I usually have to rein it in, keeping it to a barely audible hum that only my ears can pick up.

Not so in my room. When I’m alone I’m in my element – I don’t have to worry about being shy so I belt out my favourite songs with gusto. I love songs that push and stress my voice and really give my vocal chords a stretch. I’m not afraid to take chances when it’s just me in my room and usually that confidence translates into the fact that I can sing most anything without having to worry about whether I can or not. When I’m performing though, it’s a whole other story. I have major stage fright. This wasn’t always the case – when I was little, my sisters and I would jump at the chance to perform for relatives or anyone who’d listen to us. As we grew older though, performing became embarrassing and we’d grumble stormily whenever our parents would ask us to sing for them or whoever was in present company. I’ve done a spot of performing here and there but am always plagued by these annoying nerves: I shake like a leaf and my voice shakes unattractively along with me and I just want it all to be over so I can run into the seclusion of my room and convince myself that I really can sing after all.

This is why everyone who knows me knows me I love singing – but very few have actually heard me sing to the best of my ability. So when I discovered Garageband on my Mac, it was a massive thrill to be able to actually get my voice out there. My voice with all the confidence of being alone in my room behind it, but using a medium to get the sound out into the void. Honestly, I do it mostly for me. There’s nothing I love more than a good song and this is a means for me to create and get to know my voice even better. The process usually takes a whole evening but the hours fly by and before I know it I’ve spent four hours in front of my computer and forgotten to eat my dinner. Can’t think of a better way to spend my time these days really :)

Over the next few days I’ll be posting a bunch of tracks I’ve recorded thus far. Just for the heck of it :)

Day Dreamer

from http://marshmallowsgonewild.blogspot.com/

This is probably my favourite Adele song although it’s easily one of her lesser known tracks. Different lines remind me of different people close to me, so it always makes me smile. I like how simple it is, but also how sweet.

14,000 things to be happy about

Settling down here hasn’t been easy – and that comes from someone who wasn’t expecting a fairytale to begin with. Still, I have to say I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it would be. A lot of the time it was like I was watching myself from a distance, with a growing sense of alarm as I floundered about in this new life, but unable to do anything to help myself out.

The first month was great: after months and months of waiting, I was finally here in Sydney. As with all new chapters, I felt awash with inspiration and hope, reveling in a fresh sense of freedom without all its worrying limitations. My parents were taking care of me until I got back on my feet, I had a great new apartment and after three long years, I was finally spending more time with my sisters. Summer was giving the weather its best shot before its imminent departure, so I spent many a morning rambling around either my neighbourhood or my sister’s in shorts and a tank top to stave off the heat (which actually reminded me a lot of home save for the lack of feeling like I’d be run out of town for wearing shorts anywhere other than the confines of my house or some remote beach). Life was good.

But soon, Summer waned, taking with it the warm security of the phrase “…but I just got here”. There was nothing for it but to start looking for work. And anyone who has been in my position (and by this I mean looking for that first job out of Sri Lanka) will sympathize because it is the single most demoralizing experience – ever. It is abominably cruel that we are meant to remain sprightly and brimming with self-esteem and worth when we’re met with rejection at every corner. So – being hideous at selling myself at the best of times – I had a truly ghastly time of it. I went from being headhunted in Sri Lanka to being at the bottom of the food-chain in Big Bad Corporate Sydney. Suddenly I felt like my experience amounted to nothing, that I was horribly unqualified and generally rubbish at everything. Applications got harder and harder to write, I started sending my CV out to places I wouldn’t have dreamed of applying to a month ago, and all the while alarm bells were going off in my head, accompanied by a voice that was telling me with brutal conviction that I was never going to find a job and would have to return to Sri Lanka with my tail between my legs come a month or two.

I listened to that voice too, with a growing sense of dread, shutting myself away and blowing off old friends who were anxious to reconnect and find out how I was doing. I didn’t have the energy to keep going out, meeting people and having to tell them I was unemployed and hopeless. If that wasn’t a conversation-killer, I didn’t know what was. So instead, I stayed indoors with my sisters and my TV shows (no Ally McBeal here, sadly), moping about, feeling abject and miserable.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it took just one friend refusing to put up with my nonsense to snap me out of the wallowing. It woke me up to how counter-productive I was being and from that point onwards I made a concerted effort to go out and meet these friends. And as I have found so often in the past, they saved me, swooping to the rescue with wonderful understanding, advice and help. They helped me to savvy up my resumé, sent it around to some of their friends and even recommended me to their own employers, all the while regaling me with their own war-stories of when they were going through a similar time. I realized that literally everyone goes through this process and that it was just a rather depressing rite of passage that we all had to go through in order to join the workforce over here. I’ve been told that once you get your first job, it gets easier and while I will not put this statement to the test for a while, let me just say God, I hope so.

I can’t really say that things were fine after that, but they definitely improved and hinted to me that the worst was over. But – I still had that elusive job to find. It took its time coming, but from the moment I got my first call-back, everything picked up pace and the offers finally started coming in. The relief was enormous and my rather wilted self-esteem drank it all in thirstily.

Today, Autumn has turned the days cold, rendering it impossible to wear anything other than trousers and jumpers, and I am almost exactly one month into my new job. Just as I did three years ago, when I started working in the media, I find myself in a totally new area with histories and trends to learn and new concepts to wrestle with. I’m loving it.

Tomorrow I turn 26, which feels frighteningly old, but I am thankful for many things. For my parents, whose love I feel as strongly here in my Sydney apartment as when I was living with them. For my beloved sisters, who for a while were my only company, but such wonderful company nevertheless. For my friends, who have been my tiny but formidable army of support. And for my life, which no longer feels as if it is waiting to start.

Airplane_by_MiekoMiley

The plane purred into the humid early morning air, as if it was rousing itself in preparation for the journey ahead. Strapped not-so-comfortably into my seat, I was doing exactly the opposite. Literally minutes away from lift-off, I was plagued by a sudden and unfamiliar urge to run back the way I came.

I plugged in my iPod, leant back in my seat and closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, we were taking off. Glancing out of the window, my throat constricted as I watched the ground rush away from me. I hadn’t expected to miss home barely before I’d left it. I blinked hurriedly but a couple of embarrassing tears slipped out before I could stop them. If I hadn’t been feeling so sad, I could laughed at the irony. I am the ultimate escapist – always wanting to run away, always dreaming about new beginnings. But there I was, at the brink of changing the direction of my life – literally – and all I could think about was what I was leaving behind.

The journey passed in a haze of literal and metaphorical cold feet. I don’t remember much of it now, save for a brief chat with the passenger sitting next to me; an elderly Australian man who allowed me to indulge myself by telling him all about what was now essentially my old home, old job and old life. In turn, he told me about his and we swapped snippets of each other’s lives in between the odd movie, or whenever we paused our separate viewings to eat a meal.

All I really remember, though, is being consumed by thoughts of home. My parents, my friends, my job. The small, sometimes chaotic, but still precious little world I had built for myself in the three years I had lived there as an adult.

The announcement of our descent towards the Sydney airport roused me from sleep. Half submerged under my blanket, I attempted to drag my thoughts to the present as the plane turned its nose to land. My stomach lurched, half from the elevator-like sensation of our descent; half from something else altogether. I got my belongings together, clutching my bag to me protectively, feeling suddenly rather small and alone. The plane landed, shuddering on the runway, gaining a rush of speed before it slowed down to a mellow amble. As its slow motion faded into stillness, I held my breath and glanced up. The yellow light of the seatbelt sign blinked off.

I had arrived.

Floods in Batticaloa (http://airforce.lk)

I haven’t been reading the news much lately. I heard about the floods in the East and North Central Province and thought abstractly to myself, ‘how awful’. I watched the downpour in Colombo itself and complained about the shivering cold of that one day during which temperatures fell to 18 degrees – the lowest in over 60 years.

I never really fathomed the extent of the destruction until I happened across a 3-line post on a blog, linking to some footage by the airforce of the flooding in Batticaloa. I didn’t pay much attention to the article on the airforce site, but those pictures stunned me. Water up to treetops. Acre upon acre of paddy land totally destroyed. All I could think was, ‘haven’t they been through enough?’

War. Tsunami. Floods. Would it ever stop? Would they ever have the luxury of having normal lives again? Would there ever come a time when they would stop having to start over? I felt an immense tiredness for them as well as an odd admiration for their unending resilience and ability to survive disaster upon disaster. This post was a result of those feelings – a grossly inadequate but well-meant tribute to their struggle.

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When the skies rumbled, angry and blistered with grey clouds, we were happy. Rain has mostly been our friend – a welcome drink for thirsty fields; a muddy playground for restless babies.

I myself have always loved the rain. As a child I would run out whenever my mother’s back was turned and spin like a runaway firework in the moving, liquid soil. Brown would squelch up between my toes and ooze onto my feet and the cooling sensation would make me swoon. My country is often hot and in those days, rain meant relief.  I would open my mouth to it, my mother’s distant scoldings unheeded, and drink with an eagerness than frightened me. As if I was trying to drink in the secrets of all of nature. And the water would not only quench my thirst; it somehow made me stronger. My feet always stomped harder after that first drink; mud would explode outwards, all around me, and I would feel invincible.

Even as I grew up and learned that explosions were not always joyous, I never stopped loving that rain. In the most bitter times, it would still taste sweet, and remind me of younger, happier days, when nothing ugly seemed to exist. When my world was solely and selfishly my own. I had no real worries then. If I cried I would be fed; if I couldn’t sleep my mother would stroke my back until the feel of her fingertips on my skin numbed me into unconsciousness. And if I was thirsty, I always had the rain.

My father was a farmer and so we lived by the rain. When it didn’t come, we, along with our crops, were devastated. Money was short, food scarce, tempers dark with hunger. Rain for us meant green, growth, abundance, food in our stomachs. As I grew older, when I ran out into the rain, it was to give thanks.

“You love the rain more than me” my lover accused once when my eyes were drawn one too many times to the streaming water outside and away from his dry, smooth skin. “No” I had replied, forcing my gaze away; but I was lying.

If someone had told me then that rain would one day be one of the many strikes against my family, village and people, I would have defended my friend. Even then I knew of horror. The horror of being trapped in a battle I was not fighting; where each side was as deadly as the other; where there was no such thing as winning. I knew about bullets and shrapnel; the cries of wounded men and grieving children. Later, I would learn the horror of the sea – its deadly reach and house-ripping force. I would learn about loss when searching for my lover in the wake of the surge – a search that would come to nothing.

Long ago, I had stopped feeling betrayed. I used to feel as if the Gods were punishing us until I stopped believing in them. Invisible and conveniently absent deities – deaf to the wailing of the mourners and the tears of orphans – passing out judgments of life and death didn’t seem very God-like to me.

Besides, where is the point in berating these blind Gods? When living with such horror, there is no need for Gods – only survival. And survival takes up all your strength. To piece together shattered nerves, stem the bleeding of wounded hearts; to simply be normal again takes up all your strength until there is none left, even to pray.

But the rain…! From the day it began until the day it ended, it felt like a stranger. I looked outside at the heavy, angry water beating itself into the earth, and for the first time, felt fearful. Our young paddy drowned in hours. Mud stopped being a plaything and became an insidious trap for careless, panicked feet. And when I ran outside, the water felt like hail on my skin. I did not feel refreshed as I usually do, but soaked through and too waterlogged to move. It was as if even my hair was weighing me down. What rain was this, that was more an impediment than a joy? It was no rain I ever knew.

When my father rushed into the house, the water making rivulets in every crease and hollow of his thin body, we knew immediately that we had to run. No words were exchanged; we all grabbed what we could reach and bolted from a home we knew we would never see again. It took several minutes of running to realize the only object I had taken was half a loaf of bread, now soggy and melting into the fast rising water at our feet. I threw it away and it was lost in an instant.

I don’t know how long we ran, or how far. I could only hear the tired encouragements of my father, urging us desperately onward, and the hoarse panting of my mother as I pushed her in front of me, terrified she would fall if I didn’t. My face was pouring with sweat despite the onslaught from above and for the first time I felt the rain pull the energy out of me instead of pouring it in. My panicked sobs ripped out of me in short, panted gasps; the ugliest sound I’d ever heard; worse somehow than distant shelling.

And the rain went on, long after we reached shelter and even as we received news of more and more devastation in the place we once called our home. I watched my parents suddenly age a hundred years; too old now to start over as they had done before. Turned ancient in a matter of days, they looked at me with expressions I had used on them before; but never them on me – dependence. The rain had rendered them old and me, suddenly, their parent.

*

Eventually, the sky ran out of tears; and the soil began to soak up the flooding. In a while, I would be able to leave this shelter and go back… to what? I have no home; I must rebuild it. My parents have done so before for my sake and I will do it today for theirs. I know now that their resilience was a lesson I learned without realizing it; that even throughout my carefree days of running in the rain, I somehow absorbed this miraculous skill. Did it seep into the pores of my bare feet as they splashed through the mud? Or did the rain feed my open, laughing mouth with reserves of strength that I would need to counter its future betrayal?

I walked outside a while, reveling unfamiliarly in the dryness of my surroundings. The grass at my feet waved innocently in the breeze, looking refreshed and reborn and I wondered at the resilience of nature itself. Entire villages like mine were destroyed; houses like mine were swept away in a drowning tide; but this grass with its shallow network of roots survived – growing only fatter and greener as a result of the downpour.  Its triumphant dance in the wind that day mocked me, but at the same, gave me strength.

I would put down my roots again, but they would be shallow. My naïve trust in the rain had vanished forever: I had lost a friend, but in doing so, had been taught to be ready for the next time. Ready to run. Ready for my world to end but also to begin, yet again.

Marry Me Young, by PlayPretend

There’s just something about storybook fortune-tellers, isn’t there? Whether they are men or women, young or old; whether they read stars, tarot cards, palms or crystal balls, they all seem ageless somehow; and beautiful, and wise.

The idea of being able to read signs off of people and nature and somehow tap into the grand design has an irresistible pull for me. One can’t help but think that these people must have something within them that is somehow more intuitive and more powerful, even, than the rest of us. They are privy to a kind of knowledge that seems to us impossible to fathom, let alone to attain.

They – these mystical gypsies, fortune-tellers, astrologers and shamans – hear tunes we are deaf to, understand languages we cannot read and feel rhythms to which we are numb. It is as if we go through our lives with blocked ears, rhinoceros skin and a limited understanding of pretty much everything, while they are somehow born with the gift of being completely open to what the universe has to tell them. Are they magic? Are they the warlocks and witches of our time?

These individuals and their x-ray vision into our pasts and futures have always intrigued me. In fiction, they are the characters that attract me the most, even though they may not be the heroes or heroines of the stories I read. It is for this reason that this blog is modeled on the spirit of the Gypsy – carefree and unafraid, mystical and wise, dancing to a tune that only she can hear and enjoy.

Astrology is not exactly fortune telling I know, and many even consider it to be a science of sorts - but I feel that the two are somewhat related. And as with fortune telling, the ‘concept’ of astrology is a strongly attractive one. The idea that the sky and the stars can whisper the secrets of Earth and its people to a chosen few is breathtaking, to say the least.

That being said, my encounter with an astrologer here in Colombo was far less romantic. He looked to be about a thousand years old, more stoned than wise and he talked so much, mystery never even had a chance.

So there I was, against my will, grumpily waiting my turn to place my palm in front of him. When the time came, I reluctantly outstretched my hand and watched with great mistrust as he pored over the lines and creases he found there. One interesting thing he told us was that apparently these lines change as we grow and as our lives progress. Future events redraw and reshape our palms as we make choices that change our life paths. Despite my earlier resolve to not listen to word he said, I couldn’t help being drawn to the idea.

As far as my reading went, though, he didn’t have anything particularly earth-shattering to say. By almost all counts it was a great reading and, if I believed in the predictive power he claimed to have, it probably would have made me really happy. But I didn’t really respond much to his excited words, except to smile in a polite sort of way.

What really broke the ice was when he turned to caution: “You’re very arrogant, you know,” he said sagely. “Just like a man. It’s unfortunate that you’re a girl” It was such a phenomenally sexist remark but so funny in that particular context that my whole family – me included – burst out laughing and my coldness towards this wizened little 80 year old in his blue work shirt and adidas shorts thawed somewhat.

So I decided to keep an open mind and listened with more attention to the advice he gave me to counter this inherent arrogance. “Communicate! Consult!” he said, as if he were waving a wand and uttering magic words. He watched me keenly with bespectacled, squinted eyes. “If you do this, you will not only save your relationship; you will win every argument – get what you wanted in the first place!” He chortled good-naturedly at this last remark and I couldn’t help but grin back. After all, that didn’t sound like such a raw deal!

When I first heard I’d have to sit through a session with an astrologer, I hadn’t wanted to go at all, much less listen. When I did decide to go, my plan was to walk in, thrust my hand in the guy’s face, give him five minutes to scrutinize my palm and wait in the car while he told my family what he had to say. But as a friend advised me quite rightly beforehand, it’s always best to view these things as little day-to-day adventures; taking from them what I want and leaving behind the rest. That is what I resolved to do with this experience.

Don’t get me wrong – I respect any one who believes in astrology – and I know a lot of people do. If these predictions (whether they are realized or not) give people comfort, then I’m all for it. Some people have religion; other people have this – some are able to reconcile one with the other and look to both for guidance. To each his or her own. In a way, I’m actually jealous. I would love to regard these people with the same wonder and admiration that I do their counterparts in fantastical fiction. It’s a little disheartening that I am more of a cynic than I sometimes think myself to be.

I suppose I just don’t like being told how my life is going to turn out – I’d rather be surprised, even if some of the surprises are bad. I wouldn’t re-arrange my life according to someone else’s words unless I felt that doing the opposite would be a needless risk. That, to me, would take my own self-will out of the equation. And while I do believe in some higher power and some enigmatic grand design that holds and binds all things together, I also believe that even if point A and point B are predestined, how we get from one to the other is up to us.

So what I’m going to take from my strange encounter is this: the reading was positive and I’m all about positivity this year. His words were not exactly a comfort as much as a kind of reinforcement of my resolve. I’m going to go ahead and live my life the way I see fit and if that takes me down the “right” road (if there is any such thing), then so be it. If I make a few mistakes – and I know I will – then that’s alright too. I have always held a strange certainty within myself that I will be ok. Even at my bleakest, I’ve always known I would recover. I don’t know whether it’s just extreme optimism on my part, but either way, I’ve never been too stressed about the future.

Besides, I suppose its not much use pontificating on matters out of our control and that we could never really know for sure. But then again, we all have our little beliefs to get us from one day to the next, don’t we?

In fact, it’s not at all for me to judge astrology and fortune telling – especially when I have a whole stock of perfectly ridiculous superstitions of my own. I have a tendency to see ‘signs’ in everything - whether it’s an oddly meaningful line from a song that I catch by chance on the radio or the particular shade of the clouds when I’m feeling blue. I also don’t believe in coincidences – some of them are just so random that I can’t help but think it’s a small hint from the universe that you’re on the right track. I could go on.

Even if we can’t make sense of these odd little convictions of ours; even if we don’t really know how we came to believe what we believe, there it is. We are aware of it somehow and it brings order, sanity and comfort to our lives. In the end, I suppose that’s what faith really is.

…Or perhaps there’s just a little bit of magic in all of us.

Ice Heart, by Happy Tea

The block of ice was determined.

It could survive – even in this heat. If it just gathered its resolve and stayed frigid, things would be alright. The sun would be a forgotten enemy, and maybe they could one day even be friends, laughing at silly conflicts frozen in the past.

The block of ice was determined. …But it really was a hot day.

The sun smiled and the ice block started to perspire. There was no need to smile back. Frigid it would stay. …But what a gorgeous smile. So full of warmth and light and happiness.

The ice block was fighting now, feeling itself start to drip shamefully. This was no good.

And the sun continued to smile that heated, loving smile. Please stay, it seemed to say.

But the ice block got the goodbye it wanted. The sun was fading from view; they would soon be parted forever.

But the sun had its victory too. Because as it winked out of sight, all that it left behind was a slight chill and puddle of forgiving water.