An 18-year old I was having a good, immature, laugh with at NEXT asked me my age.
Elest (suddenly feeling rather ashamed): errr...22.
18 Year-old: REALLY!? you don't look it!
Elest: You think?
18 Year-old: Yeah! you must love it.
Elest: Love being 22?
18 Year-old: No, not looking it.
Elest: He he, yeah, coz I sure as hell don't love being 22!

Mom figures I don't look it coz I don't act it.
I reackon I don't look it coz of the fairy dust! He he he.
...
:(
All my friends are growing up, and getting married, and moving on.
Ordinarrily I wouldn't give a crap but people won't get off my F**ing case about being single. Bro reackons (since this is the hot issue of the moment) I can only get with someone younger than me coz I'm such a big kid. Hypothetically speaking (since I refuse to let this be the hot issue of my moment. And absolutely refuse to give it any real thought) I CAN GET WITH AN OLDER GUY! ALL THE MORE REASON TO BE IMMATURE! ...Maybe I need a father figure instead of a man. Maybe that's what's wrong with me :(
...
Tas reackons I ACT like a kid but I THINK older than I am.
I reackon I act like a crazy person and I think like a crazy person.
Maybe instead of a father figure I just need a room with soft walls.

Maybe I should go to bed.

...crap, appetite is back with a bloody vengence and it's not even that time of the month. What's wrong with me?

Listening to: Krwlng -Linkin Park ...and trying to be as productive as yesterday in regards to the Novel-In-Progress. In any case, Zachariah or Zacheria or Zechariah (haven't decided how to spell it yet) is becoming a very 3-dimensional character, 'I'm a real boy!'-style.

Will fast tomorrow.
Meanwhile...

Art as flirtation with surrender: or wanting new silk harp strings.

C. Barks & J. Moyne:

Art gives a teasing taste of surrender without the full experience. Beautiful poetry can keep one on the verge of oceanic annihilation in God. Rumi says, we've been walking in the surf, holding our robes up, when we should be diving naked under... and deeper under.

Rumi:

The old poet (...) threw the harp on the ground and broke it. "These songs, breath by breath, have kept me minding the musical modes of Iraq and the rhythms or Persia. The minor Zirafgand, the liquid freshness of the twenty-four melodies, these have distracted me while caravan after caravan was leaving. My poems have kept me in myself, which was the greatest gift to me, that now I surrender back."

Little Minx- (and if you don't already know, 'Little Minx' is what yours truely was nicknamed by a handfull of repressed 'brothers' at Kings. We find it hilarious now because it is so absurdly un-befitting. You would too, if I told you I was 'Little Minx' with the straightest of my pissed off, asexual faces.) where was I before I was so rudely interrupted by myself? ah yes,
so...
Little Minx woke up a few hours ago, saw the world and thought: Augh! not you again, you benign pain in the ass, can't you just piss off!
But now, I'm feeling good in a shiKKt way (with a double 'K'), and I got a big stupid grin on my face to prove it, and I think I must have hit bottom. This must be what Sisyphus feels after the horror of watching his bolder roll down the mountain again (for the millionth time), and he's eyeing it with vague irritation where it sits at the bottom, and he's thinking: well, it's just back up now.

Find me in this resignation and 'well-crap-happens'-shoulder shrugg, and in the contentedness of discontent because sufficiency is only ever suffoncified and there is no point in wasting a life angsting over wasting a life when you can waste it trying not to, and climb out of this already because perfection and symmetry is only reserved for the divine and you can sing your praise to it with the ugliness of your flaws and imperfections, because even Sisyphus made meaning out of supreme pointlessness and meaninglessness.
Do I see my point?
I think so.

Quote of the week: 'Miyavi Desu!' ...AAAAAAAARGH! (Acts like a maniac)

Listening to
John Mayer: Split Screen Sadness
...
Mazzie Star: Fade into You
...
'Allow it' -coz you know you can get used to this, and it's not what you need.
But every so often my mind's retrieving snippets of memory from lost time,
and I'm trying to piece together six hours,
and I'm trying to convince myself that it didn't feel great.

HAI HUSSAIN! (shant let it go till it's dead and twitching no more. bloody hilarious, wot?!)
I'm sitting here thinking of something to write, but most of what went on in Rome is better left in Rome. Of course there was the less embarrassing stuff; the pleasant Kodak moments that no one really gives a crap about. Speaking of Kodak moments:

Cute Chinese Guy at photo shop, peering at Elest's photos: ...ummm, I won't be nosey (puts them back in the envelope)
Elest: Actually you guys already see everything you print don't you?
Cute Chinese Guy: Yeah, because we color correct them... (grins) ...so we... (grins bigger) ...well that means you get these perfect pictures... (grins huge) ...but I don't do all of that, I'm not qualified to...yet.
Elest, worried about the pajama pictures: I always wondered...do you get a lot of really... nasty...stuff?
Cute Chinese Guy: Yeah we do!... (grin is ginormous) ...errr but that would be telling.
Elest: Ugh! No, I don't want to know.
Cute Chinese Guy: No, you don't, coz they're just nasty.

Lo and behold though, By some curious turn of fate, all the pajama pictures came out blurry. And so our modesty, dignity and cool have been saved. For once.
In any case, what you certainly can't get Kodak moments of is...

• Stromboli trying to pull a fast one on us but failing miserably coz..."These Italians don't know that Asians don't part with their money that easily." (-Tas)
• Walking for miles to get to our hotel in a city we don't know with no subway working after midnight, no night service for our particular bus, and some freaky guy following..."start praying Ayatul-Kursi and walk fast. START PRAYING!" (-Tas)
• Tas being dirty the way married women shouldn't be, but Faaria being dirtier still, and the two together being too much for Shakila and Elest's lungs to endure.
• Italian food resuscitating your dead appetite. (We are still dreaming of that clam starter, and waking up in terrible fits of passion. The withdrawal symptoms persist.)
• Italian men not only being stylish, but keeping the romantic dream alive. This is in comparison to our part of the world of course, where chivalry's dead because women killed it, because English girls are so damn cheap, because. So maybe, it's the Italian women keeping the dream alive then...hmmm...worth pondering this.
• Sitting on the steps of an ice cream shop, watching street toy vendors shoot little glowing disks up into the night sky over a buzzing square, and just not talking.
  Silence.
  Faaria: "What are you thinking?"
  Elest: "What, now?"
  Faaria: "Yeah."
  Elest: "Well I was having some real deep thoughts, but then I got interrupted by those flying stuff, and thought how funny it would be if one fell on your head."
  Faaria: "Ha ha! Yeah I thought that too."
  Silence.
• Familiarity. and how it doesn't breed contempt.
• Striking up instant, close friendships with strangers who speak your language, where everyone else speaks in a strange tongue.
• Being without the things you take for granted, making life a little more interesting and meaningful.
• And drinking green tea out of coca cola cups in the hotel grounds, on a wet wall that's freezing your butt, and under some tree still dripping rainwater...giving you the chance to look at your life from this distance: you still feel lost, small, and helpless...but less alone.

'Speak in the name of those who cannot write. If the poet did not make himself a spokesman of the human condition, what else is there for him to do' (Neruda)

This is not the quote of the week. The quote of the week is below, by Chrono (sigh). What's that? The quote of last week? The quote of last week was: "I'm sorry, did my pin get in the way of your ass!? Lose five pounds this instant or get out of my building immediately!" (ahem, Mugatu)

Anyway, so the former was inspiration, which has got me wonderring once again weather I should try to publish my poetry... But then, no one really reads poetry nowadays. Maybe I should sell my poetry to some band who'd wanna use it as lyrics, and that way I can get people listening to it! ..Nah, I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

In any case.
Rome.
(Grinns like an idiot)
..Has almost made me forget my maddenning desire for a lip piercing, which I have concluded, would add charm to my otherwise daft smile. And yet no one in the Ali nuclear or extended family seems to appreciate someone with creative vision :( -that's just another way of saying, they're tired of tollerating my insanity. Pish. Elest cares not.

Oh yeah,

Terribly impressed interviewer, staring dreamy eyed at an Elest who's been blagging off a bunch of rubbish about customer service like she really can't be faffed: "You know, you seem like a very intellegent person and you have previous retail experience. I won't ask you any of the other questions." (Puts down pen) "I'd like to offer you the position."
Elest: (thinks- what tha? Oi!)

I got a 2 day job during Christmas sales. And I dind't even want it. Conclusion: If you want something, don't want it, and you'll get it.

What have you done, lowest of the low. You so beneath my contempt, you have not even a name! You dare touch my contractor, you dare hurt what's mine!!

Ahem... quote of the week courtesy of Chrono Crusade.
-oh Yeeaah! (does silly dance. Stops. Does Mugatu-)...Chrono Crusade, it's so hot right now.
This of course, means there is a new anime I have no money to invest in and yet will find a way to non the less. All in good time (Muwaha haa he he he).

Meanwhile, I'm listening to Rise by Origa, which I stumbled upon by chance while looking for something else from Ghost in the Shell. In fact, I think this whole week has been full of stumbling upon cool things. Funny that. How life has a way of imposing things on you when you think you don't want them, but then you realise: hey, this is neat.
Elest has had an epiphany.
Let it go.

Thank God for absurdities.
Thank God for great distractions.
Thank God for the inspiration and those unexpected moments of epiphany that silly little things are capable of instilling.
Thank God for Pathos when you thought you'd turned to stone.

Now listening to Inner Universe by Origa and Yoko Kanno.
I'd started on a light note and now I've gotten serious again. Sorry, lets end this light ;)

Thank God I'm immature as hell! WOOHOOoo!! -The current object of Elest's effections is Chrono. :)
(does a Mugatu-) Chrono, he's so hot right now.