lizi –

the bright blue sky in the morning was polluted by a thin layer of grey. as i walked further towards it, it grew thicker, until i turned the corner and i saw it.

in the not-so-far distance there was a trumpet of black smoke rising up into the air. it swirled and expanded, making a giant black rainbow across the sky. stunned, i fumble for my phone and capture the moment. but i need not have wasted the effort; the black mess continued to rise into the sky, turning yellow as it moved further and bestowing fog upon the streets.

it occured to me that the fire was definitely still going strong, and i wondered whether anyone had called the fire department yet. surely they had? if there were people living in the area they must have realised what was happening. nevertheless, the fire wasn’t close to subsiding, but i still didn’t call emergency.

i just stood there wondering how many things would end.

she’s pretty, from far away.

nothing is ever as good up close, especially when it’s yours. but from the distance, she could almost be beautiful. almost.

i take a few steps closer to get a better view, but she moves further and further away. it’s almost as if she knows once i get close enough i’ll discover the truth, and won’t care. she’s baiting; she wants to keep a distance and keep me interested. but she doesn’t realise that i’m not a shark. i know she’ll start running the moment i get too close. i try anyway.

the lights blink, and everything melts into the dark, eerie night. i’m left feeling my way around, aware of all my other senses while my vision is blurred. i feel someone next to me and i know it’s her. focusing on the outlines of my surroundings hurt my eyes, so i continue to rely on everything else. i can feel her warmth, and smell her scent, and i hear her whisper into my ear; ’stop. it’s more fun this way.’

when the lights turn back on, she’s gone. i blink to clear my eyes of the hazy grey mass that has filled them and look around. and go back to watching from a distance.

whether it makes her more or less beautiful, i will never know. 

 soundtrack: brandon; think twice // thoughts: `you’re never gonna find…`

through dinner today, i watched today tonight. this usually doesn’t happen as i don’t have dinner with my parents, or we have dinner at a time when the horribly bullshit show isn’t airing. however, today, due to my superficial and hypocritical mother, i glanced at the television with a mouth full of rice only to almost spit it back out again. vomit, i mean.

apart from the stupidly un-newsworthy crap current affairs shows air, today tonight has been one of my least favourite spots on the spectrum of television because everyone reels its cases in as a point in their arguments. it’s like OMFG THAT BRAND OF DISHWASHING LIQUID GIVES YOU CANCER!!! or OMFG THERE’S THIS GUY IN OUR TOWN THAT SCAMS MONEY!!! if anyone ever tells me ‘i saw it on today tonight so it has to be true’ i will probably literally hit them in the face. laughing comes first, of course.

tonight, the segment i was unlucky enough to catch was an advertisement for a website; www.missbimbo.com

ok, so it wasn’t actually an advertisement. it was actually a bunch of angry lesbians (or feminists, i guess) who have nothing to do with their time and ended up surfing the net and finding a site that promotes bimbos, and got angry. woopdeedoo. they even took the time to register so they could take shots of all the stuff you can do at missbimbo.com, including tanning, playing around with clothes, impressing boys and cosmetic surgery, and then filed it on to a retarded current affairs show to tell the world how mass media and websites like these are giving girls the wrong image and ideas of what is expected of them. i mean, come on; obviously what is expected is not a nice, pretty girl but one that wants to challenge all men and fight for their EQUAL PAY!!!!! fuck you feminists. if you didn’t exist i wouldn’t have failed my exams.

ironically, a few ad breaks later, today tonight had a report about fashion piracy, and how rich people buy celebrity dresses for cheaper, which is killing the big brands. how many teenagers do you know that buy designer dresses? how many teenagers do you hear of that have had cosmetic surgery?

and how many adults?

and so, even though i’m not the biggest fan of the bimbo industry, i’m left to question these angry feminists/parents/wannabe-journalists that work for current affairs shows. i’m left wondering why it’s acceptable for ‘adults’ to chase beauty, be thin and have boob jobs while they want teenagers to dig a hole and study. maybe one day they’ll realise that it is they who influence what we see, they who invented plastic surgery and they who buy the more expensive brands of clothing and make up. in this case, they’ll either A: let us change our faces any way we like or B: give it all up and stay ugly forever.

soundtrack: the bucketing rain // thoughts: of an alternate reality 

after this wonderful break that some called exams, i find myself once again preparing for a 6:30AM start and hour long journey to school.

i feel like i have earned the right to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the term, if not the year, and i am completely discontented with the fact that i may have to do homework sometime in the near future. it’s not laziness, i assure you. it’s complacency. one hundred percent.

my six day weekend seems to have gone by so fast, and when i think back upon it, i realise why. i spent most of my days playing the sims 2 nightlife which i found at the bottom of my wardrobe as i was emptying it out. there, i created perfect neighbourhoods, beautiful people and unbreakable relationships. the escape to an alternate reality has never been so comforting. the control over mindless pixellated replicas of humans soothes the mind to an unimaginable state. when i’m making them do things, i am content.

this control has worried me over the past few hours. i wonder if i thrive on controlling this animated world because i can’t control my own. creating a fantasy fixes it all, really, if only for a few hours. i found myself making characters i loved from novels and webcomics; an ideal in a not so idea world. but in this idea world everyone had a goal, whether it was to get in someone’s pants or make a hellovalotta money.

in my world there is no such thing.

so maybe there’s nothing wrong with an escape. maybe creating a dream or an alternate reality is good, even if it only lasts for a little while.

and maybe being plummetted back into the real world where class goes until 5pm on wednesday isn’t that great after all.

It started raining the moment I turned into my street, almost as if the heavens were masking my arrival. Although I only had to walk 100 metres before I could hide under shelter, the raindrops were so large my thin white uniform became wet and see through. But I didn’t hurry my strides, only looked up determinedly like I had told myself I would do all the way home. The downpour made it hard for my eyes to stay off the ground, a feeling I had begun to get used to as I forced myself to look ahead during my walks. It had become increasingly obvious to me that whenever someone walked past me I failed to meet their eyes, and after one quick glace at their face and body I always hastily avert my eyes to the floor.I placed my hand on the cool metal of the doorknob as I fumbled for my keys, searching for an object which would permit my entrance to safety. Yet this safety held consequences I hated, and I sometimes even thought of sacrificing a home to live without them. I stole a quick glance at the top half of my body as I crossed the tiles of the foyer, making sure I didn’t look too flushed or too pale just in case it caused suspicion before I launched myself up the stairs two at a time.

When I reached the top there was nothing there. The familiarity of a home had disappeared, and in its place there was nothing; nowhere. Nothing to hide in, nowhere to go. I look around bewildered, and my eyes land on a note.

 There’s nowhere in the world that’s reserved just for you. There’s no space in anyone’s heart that’s so filled up by you that no one can replace it. Remember that.

soundtrack: the msn message tone // thoughts: are as blunt as possible

the things i miss

________________ not knowing why people live on the streets

________________ being able to amuse myself with anything and everything

________________ learning because i wanted to know

________________ talking to myself without feeling like a freak

________________ finding ways to see beauty in everything

________________ looking at the shapes cast by shadows on the ceiling

________________ forgetting

soundtrack: the midnight silence // thoughts: are asleep

silence is a curious thing. to me, it doesn’t really exist. when everything is still and you’re laying down in the dark you will hear the clock ticking, or the rustling of branches. these, I once heard, are called white sounds. when your senses are attracted to other things, white sounds are completely ignored. but when there is nothing, you begin to appreciate the enormity of these sounds. it’s scary in a way, but comforting to find that there will never be silence as long as you’re not stuck in a vacuum in some science lab.

i just turned my music off. it’s usually on all the time, playing a randomly shuffled soundtrack to the story of my life. now I’m listening to the cars pass on the highway and i can even hear a plane pass by once in a while, and though my parents used to say they cannot sleep with all this noise, i find that we have gotten used to it and probably cannot sleep without it.

the darkness accentuates everything too. when I look around my room there’s a trail of light in my eyes which follow from the laptop screen that stands, shining at me unrelentingly. everything i touch has an effect on it; every finger i move causes the screen to change. but it will change calmly, with an air of stillness after it has moved, sitting there blinking at me continuously. i remember that typing takes up practically nothing of the CPU and it only takes a split second for what is being typed to register, and it makes me marvel at both the quickness of my fingers and the thoughtlessness which remains. because it only takes a second to think, a second to decide, and a second to express.

but what if you can’t do any of them, no matter how many seconds you have?

soundtrack: jackie boyz; crash&burn // thoughts: `no answers to questions…`

well i’m done. with exams, that is. not life.

where did that sudden comment come from, you may ask? it’s just that i’ve realised that EVERYONE is so EMO.

have you noticed this?

is it cool to be emo? is it cool to hate life? is it cool to be bored of everything and tell everyone that life is a piece of shit?

the only answer i can come up with is: yes, yes it is.

sooo i’m probably not the right person to be preaching about this, but still, it’s kind of stupid. people have their ups and downs and insides and outs. why take one moment in your life and think the rest is a piece of shit? chances are, it won’t even matter five days from now, five hours from now… five minutes from now.

but hey, maybe this is just my flood of relief talking, and i will be thinking life is shit by tomorrow. if i happen to bitch about how shit my life is on this blog, just pretend it’s cool.

and go bitch on your own blog.

I keep dreaming about a girl that lives on the eighth floor. I don’t know who she is, or what she looks like, only that she’s stronger and braver than I am. We stand in the elevator together and when we go down my heart lurches.

Every time.

And I wake up confused with that image of us going down in that dark elevator again and again, not knowing when or where I’d picked up the thought of an elevator with a yellow light or how I know she lives on the eighth floor.

She’s shorter than me, I think, but she’s never afraid. I don’t look at her when we’re in the tiny claustrophobic metal box together because I close my eyes and brace myself for the fall. And even though in my dreams I realise that I won’t really get hurt or die, the beat that my heart skips is almost real. Every time.

soundtrack: a comforting buzz // thoughts: about tomorrow 

i came across a funny picture today and i shall attempt to upload it

it reminds me of all the things that have changed since i was little; i was born in 1990, so this picture basically sums up my whole life. i have watched things shrink while people grow, yet those i have watched grow over the years have never moved in a positive direction. our society, which is a lot more open now than it has been before, is critisized for this, and people like us embody this uncharacterised flow of change. we are the symbols of this depression. it is pure irony that more people in our era are depressed and commit suicide than any other.

pure bullshit.

and its not even what’s behind this change that matters. its the foreground, everything you can see that is wrong, and what everyone sees is like that picture, fat and ugly. even though we’ve had so much progression, so many things have advanced, we behave like cavepeople with our tiny mobile phones and flatscreen lcd tvs; selfish, uncaring. dystopia? not exactly.

there is no poverty, less violence and oppression, and misery is entirely brought upon oneself, yet if we could backtrack, who would? life is unthinkable without hdtv. even more inconceivable without a flushable toilet.

but now i’m acting as if i care. no time machine could take us to a more perfect society than our own, in my eyes. and no machine of any kind can bring that perfect society to us.

there’s nothing we can do.