I tell you this:

I tell you this: There's something strange that happens to your very being when you know someone close to you is dying. There is something so inexplicable that compresses all that you know to be true; all that is reason and logic; all that makes the episteme of life; and in that compression is this build-up that cannot hold itself and shoots-out like jets of flame from every fiber of one's being.

I tell you this: My grandmother is dying. The one person that I remember buying me sweets even when the dentist warned of my rotting tooth. The one person that I remember taking me to eat my favourite food even when my teachers said I was over-weight. And there was this time that I sat on grandma's big lap and she took my hand and slapped it hard. She made me cry and said I had done something wrong. And then she lifted me from the cushion of her thighs and went to the kitchen. And that night she made my favourite dishes. It was grandma's way of saying you deserved the punishment, but I still love you - always. And... and when was that time when my father beated me and welts bled from my back and my right eye was bulging in clotted blood? When was that time that I could not stop my eyes from blinking and he took the belt on me in front of grandma? It has been so long, but I remember her waiting for me, waiting for the punishment to be over, and wrapped my trembling body with a hot towel and a wrapped, boiled egg for my right eye. I remember her screams at my father for being so violent and her plump body enveloping my own, daring my father to hit the both of us. I remember... but memories fade.

I tell you this: As I write my nostalgia, I feel my lungs collapsing and my heart stopping. I am crying and burning from the inside as I type these words. I cannot hold them inside me. I don't know how to contain it. And so I write it as I always do. And so I bleed as I always do because I don't know what release is left.

I tell you this: I have never encountered the moments of death. I feel life as I have never knew possible because I know life does not beget life. That is foolishness. I understand it now. The limits of death, the dying affectivities of life, begets life. It is in these moments of bursting, these moments of not-knowing, dying, hoping, collapsing; in these moments of crying, humming, breathing, stopping - that it somehow makes sense to be senseless.

I tell you this: I will lose my grandma. I feel her slipping and I hear her fall. It's so fucking unfair, but death makes us infantilistic - it brings back the conditions of hoping and learning. Always hoping - like a child - to be loved, to be wanted, to be hugged and kissed and sheltered from all pain. Always learning - the brutality that makes this madness spin: the loss of hope, the loss of life, the loss of pain - to acknowledge the numbness that makes all life not worth living.

And finally I tell you this: I will miss her so, so, so, so much. I will always love her, wherever she will be. And I believe now, as I never could, that there is an after-life. For in my heart will always be space that I shall make for those who have made my life worth living. And in this heart that does not beat, that does not hum, that does not make the body breathe, is the heart of every matter and spirit. No one but those whom I have loved and always will love will take the space of this heart, for then and only then, will it always be plentiful. It is paradise in love - always until my death. Like that one day when she sheltered my body from the whip of my father, now I shall shelter her spirit from the senseless body of death.

La Meditation

Have you been patient with me friends? I must apologise. I have been absent for the past few months. What do you do when you have been inundated with emotional wreckage? You hide under the bower of thorns and scrape the flesh off with poison.

What happened? Life happened. Disappointment and ardour - all lost in the harbour of my own storm. What wreckage cast onto my shore? The body of my lover - loved - beloved. How ephemeral are relationships? How ephemeral.

I lay bare now under the hot sun, recuperating and sucking in all that I call life. I let my skin burn because I deserve it. I let the charred flesh peel the guilt that I have housed in my soul. Let the bastard burn!

I realised two things about myself in these two months. Perhaps the realisation was always there but now it has blossomed with ivy. The first is that my libido does not connect with Logos. That there is something about a tongue, a kiss, and a touch that drives my body into frenzy. And when that happens, all senses are compressed in space and time to that one moment of affectivity. It matters not if my lover is beast or foe, ghost or flesh; all that matters is the moment of affectivity. This surprised me, to say the least. I never knew I had it in me. I never knew that something, someone, could overwrite the strength of my mind. That I could be fooled and be made a fool by a pathetic thing like a genital. So strange - how humiliating. :)

And I realised another dangerous part of myself that I have hidden for so many years. That I am needless; that there is little in me that cries out for assistance. My independence has, for so many years, been a bane to my relationship with men. My bastion of self is impenetrable and I have sustained these towers and moat with the sinew and flesh of my soul. Who do I need but another that has need of my needlessness? No. This happened and I was drowned in the arms of desperation and depression.

I cannot be suffocated and I cannot be wanted as he would want me. I cannot give as he would ask me to give for I am a selfish being. Selfish indeed when it comes to the space of my mind to roam, the space of my legs to run, the space of my eyes to witness, and the space of my heart to shelter others. Again, no, I'm not a whore. I cannot be non-monogamous. It is too confusing and time consuming. But I am selfish nevertheless. I do not know how to give as my lovers wish to take. Friends may take as much as they may hold for they will always leave. But lovers, lovers, lovers, lovers - partners? - they take and do not leave. I have no time to recuperate. They take too much and stay too long.

I don't know. I'm confused. I hurt others by being myself. Perhaps I have yet to find that person in which I would sacrifice for. But that sounds utterly ridiculous and illogical. Wherefore is the care for the self as Michel Foucault has asked us to beware? Perhaps he never loved. Perhaps I never will.