the spaces between us...

Your lips
Are a pink butterfly
Flying
From one word
To another
I run after them
In gardens of silence

From Phastasmagoria II Sinan Antoon (Iraq)





Lotus

An old teacher stood looking at a swamp. In the swamp with all the mud and muck grew large white lotuses.
The old teacher wanted to pluck a lotus to make an offering to the temple.

She wanted the perfect lotus. And she searched:
But this one was bent at the stem.
That was one too small in size.
This one was too crooked in shape.
That one had bitten jaw marks.
She could not find the perfect one. It did not exist.

An old monk was looking at the old teacher looking at the lotus. And he said to her, "Do none of the lotus please you?"
No, she said, I want the perfect one. I've always had high standards so my work is always so difficult and never done.
The old teacher lived her life this way, without any peace of mind or lightness of heart.

Life is filled with flaws. Searching for flaws, she found flaws. Her life was a constant cycle of frustration. But still, she held on to her standard.
"Teacher, I am going to predict your future," the old monk said.
"You've never been married and you probably never will. You never had any close friends and you will continue to wait."

The old teacher was stunned,"How did you know?"
It wasn't too difficult to know she had a lonely life,
waiting for the perfect person to come and the best
friend to enter her life.
They never did.
They never existed.
She should have known.

She started to cry and asked the old monk to help her.
The old monk pointed to a random lotus and told her
to take it home and search for it's goodness.
When she finds it she will begin to awaken.
If she does not she will continue to sleep.

Areeya Chumsai




To Lover:

Mon amour, you have made me wait. My impatient person considers this quite a severe crime, but I know that saving the world: fighting whether dragons or windmills, is very time-consuming, so I won’t tell you off. I’m pleased you are here and I send my sincere gratitude to my pagan deities – I might offer them our first cup of hot chocolate in sacrifice.

Do you remember our first meeting? You shouldn’t. Anniversaries stop the joyful run of time, it’s better to skip them. Knowing each other so well, let’s still pretend we’ve just met. We just forget our clashes from the past: me being annoyed with your absolute independence, reckless articulation of your opinions and fierce loyalty to your most hopeless projects at the expense of the time with me, and you being slightly irritated by my love affaire with my work, obsessive fascination with the world and restless moving from city to city.

Let’s agree to spend some time being hopelessly in love with each other. I promise to enjoy and admire the icy irony and warm enthusiasm of your stories, your imperturbable calm and childish escapades, your funny snobbism and questionable table manners. And you will enjoy me being a perfect woman for you and highly appreciate my admiration (even when disguised under the mask of irony). We will try to avoid ending up getting used to each other.

It’s quite impossible to describe you. You can be so different, and that makes you so enjoyable. A list of desired qualities would inevitably become encumbered with features of those who were dear to me in the past. But I don’t miss them – I miss you. I will presume you to be my ideal match until proven otherwise, you should just promise to never be angry at me for being late and allow me to win even if I cheat a bit on the rules. And please love my shoes even if they occasionally elevate me up to 186.17 cm.

Scratch a few wobbly lines and help them to find their way into my letter box...






stolen from some amazingly literate girls dating ad, the source of which is now unfortunately long forgotten...