the magical coming of age

Violet glided ever so gently in the vast fields of green, her purple skin shimmering under the intense rays of sun, her hands caressing blood-drenched flowers blossoming from asphalt.

Violet bled from every pore, from every open wound. She bled until rivers were formed, until the thirst of nature was quenched, she bled until she thought there was no life left in her. But blood kept gushing out and she realised that maybe, just maybe, she was not bleeding death; maybe, just maybe, she was emitting strings of life.

Violet struggled to shake off memories of her past, memories of the sea and the dark lifeless pit. She looked up to find the star that relentlessly haunted her ever since that dark evening but she found its light slowly extinguishing. But still, she squinted her eyes and stared hard to see it. The light wasn’t strong, she still constantly found herself in the dark, wondering, bleeding. But contrary to what one would expect, Violet was not afraid for she had come to love the dark. She has fallen in love with the star, with apathy and with her bone scratching melancholia but alas, all was dimming so quickly so hastily that she struggled to hold on to the last thread, the last hope of death and the last spark of beauty. Violet was afraid. She was afraid of the light and what might come with it. She dreaded her skin turning from vibrant purple to a dull shade of grey, she dreaded the healing of her wounds and the vanishing of her memories. But above all, nothing brought terror to her soul like the thought of losing magic for she doesn’t know how survive without it. She fed on it and made the world bearable through it.

But one day, amidst the turmoil of her seemingly dull life, V stood on top of a mountain hill and opened her arms wide. The wind flew past her and splattered her blood all over the sleeping city, she saw the sun rises and she heard church bells ring and the sky suddenly turned from a dark blue to saturated hues of red and orange. She saw magic. You can say that it was then that she realised she will never lose magic for magic wasn’t in her, magic existed in the world around her so as long as she trained her eyes to see it she could never lose it. And she realised, violet realised, that she herself were in no doubt, pure magic.

Maybe, just maybe, Violet was ready again for another sun, another meteor shower, another sparkling sky full of beaming lights. Violet was ready, and all the rest would be magic.

A post-apocalyptic star

It was dark, so dark that it felt like death.

Violet looked up and she saw a star, that was all she needs to realize she was still alive.

Eventually, violet decided to get out of that hole. It was getting lonely and cold. She could hear the distant echoes of faraway hopes, her mother laughing, her dad singing and her dreams shattering like a vase hitting the floor played on loop. She swam in the sea of emptiness and reached the surface.

She took her first breath and a storm of cold water came out from the darkness of the forest and filled her lungs with heaviness. Violet was no longer drowning, she had become the sea.

It’s been a couple weeks since the warm rays of light danced off Violet’s corse purple skin. Her pace was slow and her lungs were heavy. She floated gracefully in the streets then collapsed as soon as she got home. Her back arched, forcing her to lie on the floor like a foetus with a hand on her ear trying to silence the ringing and another on her chest trying to ease the weight of the sea storming inside of her.

Violet tried to give meaning to her life but she knew that just because she couldn’t see it doesn’t mean it ceased to haunt her. The star of the apathetic was hovering over her head reminding her of how mundane everything was and how everything was so insignificant in the grander plan, it wasn’t even worth fighting for.

But she somehow got to see the sparks in people’s eyes, their smiles bewildered her and the creeping ashes forming liaisons on her purple skin was comforting. Violet sat naked often and made peace with all her imperfections. She drowned her awkwardness in seas of bourbon and she danced until all the stars dissapeared from the nightsky. She had decided not to have a purpose in life, to bury her dreams in the black sea where they would sink in and join all the other lost dreams, forsaken wishes and broken promises.

The sea inside of her became calm.

the sea inside of her died.

Foggy connections

Violet sat in the corner of the room as she watched flocks of people come in and go out, their whispers filling the space with gloominess that slowly filled her lungs until she couldn’t breathe anymore. She stood up and swiftly made her way out as in not to draw attention to her departure. She kept looking at the floor avoiding any eye-contact, pretending she was invisible.

Once outside she made her way to the yard and hid behind the building. Sitting on a ledge, she took out a cigarette and lit up. The first puff sent shivers through her body; she exhaled the smoke and gazed at it as it drifted towards the sky swaying gracefully with the wind. She closed her eyes knowing that she’d be in that room again 

It was dark, it must’ve been late afternoon but she couldn’t really tell as the only source of light was a window covered by a heavy satin curtain dyed in a deep of shade of burgundy that cast a somber shadow on the room.  Violet didn’t remember how old she was. Unlike most of her memories that seemed to play in her head like short movies, this memory was an image and she was fully present. The room was filled with antiquities, beaten up by the force of time; the old wooden clock sitting in the corner, and her sitting on the couch.

Like most things in the room, the couch felt like it belonged to another time. A Victorian heritage decomposing with time, she realized that nothing was ephemeral, not even dead nature. The velour fabric was showing signs of decay, the royal olive green that it once adorned was now fading under the rays of light that managed to slip past the curtain. Spots of its original color remained in hidden place as if to remind her, like everything else present in the room, of the treachery of time. Violet sat next to her grandmother and watched her in amazement as she took out a cigarette, lit it up, and drew her first puff. The room was suddenly drowning in fog as a thread of smoke escaped her grandmother’s mouth and twirled up towards the ceiling, engulfing the ancient crystal chandelier. In the midst of dead nature, life would generate from the smoke, the crystals and the small beams of light. The room would sparkle, it was magic.

a star for the apathetic

Violet opened her eyes. It was dark,

so dark that she thought she was somehow inside of herself. She tried to feel her way around but there was nothing, emptiness. She looked up and saw a tiny ray of light, so tiny and far that one could easily have mistaken it for a star. She wasn’t dead because it  wasn’t over. She was still here, barely standing on her own two feet. She could feel the heavy weight of her existence, the weight of the darkness and the weight of the emptiness that surrounded her, it hunched her back and twisted her ankles but she was still standing, alive, barely.

Days passed by and her eyes soon adjusted to the dark, she thrived on her loneliness and managed to adapt, barely. She’s always been taught to keep her misery to herself for what is important is survival but Violet was already at the deep bottom of a dark hole and figured she really got nothing to lose. In that dark hole, everything her mom had told her about life and expectations didn’t matter, there was nowhere to go.

And so violet did what she knew best. She laid on the floor and the heaviness laid there beside her, both looking up at that tiny dot of light. The idea of it being an escape was too tiring so violet deemed it a star. She liked stars, they were pretty. But stars were also dead which according to violet, made them tragic.

Stars are tragically pretty, and so is existence.

violet is dead, long live violet

This is how it ends.
The last meltdown left violet exhausted. Although she got her heart back, and she was bleeding again, truth was, she would never cease to do so. For days and weeks and months, violet would walk around, her open wounds pouring from every side. She felt heavy, like she was constantly dragging a corpse behind her, she was exhausted by her mere existence. She could no longer look up to the sky in search of the sun, nor gaze into the heavy hearts’ eyes, magic was no more.

And as the burden of her own weight got heavier and heavier, violet realized she couldn’t do this anymore. On a starry night, she snuck out to the beach and laid on the edge of the tide. She felt the moist sand on her back and the water gently caress her feet.

And she bled. Violet bled so much that she eventually drowned in her own blood.

Under a thousand colliding stars that lit up the whole world, violet was no more.

The VCR

Once upon a time, in the shittiest part of the world,
a man and a woman gave birth to a little girl. In a land where babies sported a light shade of grey, this little girl had violet skin, and so they called her just that.

Violet was a small kid, so small that she often went unnoticed. But violet didn’t mind, she was too busy creating worlds and living adventures. At night, when no one would notice, she’d sneak in the living room and jump in the VCR with her friend pierrot. There, she found happiness, dimensions that looked nothing like the one she lived in, and she found magic.

But with time, violet would no longer be able to seperate reality from the world in the VCR. She stopped her nocturnal adventures for her head got stuck there forever. She now lies at night with the window open waiting for fairy dust and a visit to neverland. But that never happened, so she’d lie awake staring at the ceiling and wishing from the bottom of heart that she could fly, but she never did. She became aware of the curse of gravity.

But then violet went back to the VCR, to hidden worlds in train station walls and blankets that made you invisible. And so she stole one and tried to bring it back home but the blanket quickly dissolved upon her arrival and violet would spend the rest of her life trying to be invisible.

People ran away to the moon. A man in a tree leaf would follow her during car rides, jumping with ropes from one lamp post to another. Monsters lived in the sewages so she never stepped on a sewage hole. Monsters lived under her bed so she hid well under the blanket, even in the hottest days of summer.

Violet would learn about social conduct, about boys and about girls, about life and expectations, about the real monsters and how they’ll slowly break her. But violet would always have her escape, a world inside her head. The 7th dimension, where lots of magic happens.

the revelation

Once upon a time, perched on a green hill overlooking the slums of a long forgotten city, there was a small house with a garden, 2 kitties and violet’s grandparents. Violet was very fond of that house and of her grandmother, but she always felt some kind of distance with her grandfather. He was a kind man, there was no doubt, but this tough façade never seemed to part him; he was stubborn and opinionated. Violet loved her grandfather, she really did, but it was the little things that annoyed her and eventually, she stopped visiting.

But see, life has a way of sneaking up on you and biting you in the ass. And boy! Life surely knew how to sneak up on V’s grandpa. One day, he woke up to find his partner ill, what was his rock and his support was now depending on him and like any traditional man, he didn’t know how to react. That’s the deal with men in this part of the world, or maybe all over the world, they sure know how to act all macho until crisis happens, and they are left helpless. And that was what happened to V’s grandpa, he didn’t know how to deal with the situation but he kept his tough façade and his stubborn opinions until the very end. I guess death was his breaking point. It was during the funeral that V saw her grandfather helplessly crying for the first time, he hugged her and sobbed. Violet in return burst into tears, it was probably the only time she showed a tear during this whole thing, but this isn’t about her.

Anyways, after the death, V’s grandpa started acting weird, he suddenly had all these plans he wanted to do, his opinions grew more stubborn and his decisions more irrational. V’s mom blamed him. V also partially blamed him, for everything. But deep down, she knew her grandfather was just a helpless child, she couldn’t blame him for taking her grandma for granted. No one really thinks about these stuff, at least she doesn’t think so.

Two years passed, feuds took place followed by reconciliations. On the 2^nd memorial of death, V was now coping better. She was finally able to look beyond the shell she had locked herself in, and that was when she saw. She saw her grandfather’s face as he was praying for her grandma, or maybe talking to her, or maybe blaming god, but she will never be able to forget that look on his face. It shredded her heart into tiny pieces. V’s grandpa had proclaimed his reign over the rubble of what was left of Violet’s heart, she forgot everything, put them in the past where they belong.

But it was during lunch that epiphany happened.

Lunch. Violet desperately wanted something to numb the weight of the emptiness, and so she befriended the whiskey bottle. And as she was pouring her third glass, her grandpa snapped. Between the alcoholic name calling and the sermon about alcohol abuse, Violet giggled a little, but for the most part, she saw her old grandpa back. Her loud and opinionated grandpa calling on V’s mother to control her like she was some kind of delinquent left V baffled as she was disappointed to see that face again. But then a revelation happened, a sneak into his past. He started telling about his father, how he was a well educated, high ranking officer in the army, and how he was also an alcoholic, and that ruined him. Between stories of him leaving school at 13 and building his own house at 16, Violet finally understood her grandpa. How could she have missed it?

The old man was a heavy-heart. She missed to see the sparkle in his eyes when he smiled. That’s how she’d recognize them, but she had failed to do so with him.

Violet’s grandpa was a heavy heart, and everything made sense.

The meltdown

Once upon a time, in the shittiest part of the world, Violet was lying on the grass looking up at the starless sky, wishing for some excitement in her plain boring bubbly life. Little did she know, her wish would come true in the form of a foreign body suddenly appearing in the sky and moving towards her. An asteroid, she reckoned,  and as it got bigger and bigger, violet’s heartbeat grew slower and slower, until eventually the asteroid hit the planet’s atmosphere and shredded into a million little pieces of sparkles that lit up the whole damn sky. The sight was so beautiful, it took her breath away. But as the bits of sparkles grew closer, Violet started to worry, she had a bad feeling about it, a voice in her head told her to run but she chose to ignore it. The view was too pretty. That until she realized these bits were about to crash into the earth, that’s when Violet got up and ran as fast as she could, she ran and ran until she found a puddle of mud and she jumped into it. And while she was drowning in the mud, she could feel trembles after trembles after trembles until finally it stopped, it was over. Violet resurfaced to find the land covered with a layer of ash, the air was heavy and dusty, and it was cold. It was so cold, the mud that covered her skin froze and entrapped her in a carcass that she could not escape. Eventually, Violet forgot about the sun and green grass and the blue lake, she grew to love the new facade that covered the world she lived in and eventually convinced herself of its beauty.

Time had passed and Violet adapted, she was happy or she was numb, to her there was no difference. She would sometimes remember the asteroid and its beauty, and she would lie on the ground trying to imagine the scene. But it would soon fade away, and Violet would get up and continue to wander aimlessly. She felt nothing but the heaviness of her own weight, and the crippling sadness that would sometimes sneak up on her.

 Violet would realize that the only way she could escape her gloomy present is by climbing up to reach the top of the mountain that overlooked her house. And so her journey began, it was long and violet grew tired, but she kept climbing until she was about to reach the top; she was exhausted but the sight of the end thrilled her, it was soon going to be over. But as she was climbing, Violet started to notice something weird, the air was getting lighter and the grass looked brighter, she eventually looked up and there it was. The sun had appeared again and its rays hit violet hard, it blinded her and slowly sucked up all her energy; it warmed up the carcass that entrapped her and soon enough bits and pieces were falling off. Violet wanted nothing more than lying on the ground and stare at the beauty of the sun while she disassembles, but she couldn’t. She was running out of time and she had to reach the top, and so she kept on climbing while struggling with her both hands trying to hold her together. Sometimes, she would freeze, the thought of the sun would sneak up on her and would take her breath away, and her heart would skip a beat. Eventually, Violet reached the top and collapsed immediately under the weight of her carcass. She disassembled completely and by the time she woke up, Violet felt lighter than ever. She looked up the sky searching for the sun but the sun was no longer there, it has been replaced by a thousand colliding stars that lit up her whole world. Violet was not saddened by the absence of the sun, but would often smile when she would remember it and how it made her feel. The sun would forever hold a special place in Violet’s memory drawer, and so would the asteroid, for what is broken cannot be mended. But violet got her heart back, and that’s a step.

 The tin woodman was no more.

DEATH

Once upon a time, in the shittiest part of this planet, there was a girl who lived in a small cabin in the woods with her grandma and pets and toys, we shall call her Violet. Growing up, Violet would lose things, one of her toys would go missing or one her fishes would return home to its family (like her grandma used to tell her). Violet would grief the loss immensely and would often sit staring at the empty space that is left from the missing object. “What happens now?” she often wondered, unable to find a solution to repair the disruption in her environment. Not only did she miss interacting with the missing object, Violet missed the space that it often occupied as she was never quite able to refill the emptiness that was left.

Violet would grow up and learn soon enough that what was once applicable to her toys and pets is also applicable to humans. She would often hear people talking about death and how scary it was and she never quite understood why. For her, death was a whole other exciting journey that could end even before it starts, or it can take you to unknown places and dimensions. Death did not scare Violet, not until she got to experience it firsthand. When her grandma died, she was deeply, deeply saddened, she did not understand why she was taken away from her, it confused her and added to her grief. And despite the fact that she prayed hard for her to be in a better place, she missed her terribly. But it wasn’t until she came back home that violet really understood why death was so scary. It was not the fact that we miss them terribly when they die that makes us fear death, it’s the emptiness they leave behind, the space that is caught between still being occupied by them and its void of any life forms at the same time. It’s the disruption in the loop. And that is why, Violet will never be able to understand death, and that is how Violet learned to fear death.

 

The flood

Once upon a time, in the shittiest part of this planet, in the slums of a city already darkened by the tall towers that engulfed its street and blocked the sunlight from passing, there lived Violet.

The inhabitants of the city lived in darkness and dwelled in the absence of the sun, they liked the darkness because they couldn’t see themselves and they couldn’t see others, they couldn’t see how ugly they were and how the beautiful land they once inhabited is now a pile of rusty metals and broken stones. The big flood once tore the last thread of hope that the city had and the infinite drought that followed left the inhabitants slowly degrading, their blood had run dry and their beautiful soft skin that once shone under the warm rays of the sun is now cracked, exposing wounds and covering them with scar tissues. The creatures learned to adapt, they hid the sun and protected themselves with synthesized carcasses, and they ironed their feelings with chemicals and their brains with images of absurdity that they aspired to reach in the hopes of finding happiness. And for a while they were happy, or numb; for them, there was no difference.

 Violet was numb too, after all she was a product of her society, and despite the fact that she didn’t really understand the creatures, she was one of them; at least she thinks so. In a decade where all babies were born with a certain shade of grey, Violet sported a light shade of purple. Her parents tried to fix her with ash baths and face paint, but she remained the same, and so everyone accepted that fact. And just like the other kids, as Violet grew up, her lungs shrunk and her veins ran dry; and eventually her skin started cracking exposing her wounds  and covering them with scar tissues.

 But the fact that Violet was born different always made her feel like an outsider, and ever since she was a kid, she had developed a keen observation for her surroundings; she was a curious kid who grew up to become a curious adult. And as she reached an age where she was getting tired of all the unanswered question, she felt her chest tighten and her vision blur. She looked around and all she could see was nothing, emptiness hidden by the absence of light. The scenery was too ugly so she looked up in the hopes of finding an escape, but the intertwining cement towers blocked any hopes of seeing what’s beyond them.

 Violet suddenly felt the earth shake underneath her feet; she could hear loud roars coming from a distance. The sirens went off and mayhem struck the slums as the creatures ran to take cover. A sudden aroma of salt and rancidness filled the spaces. “The flood” she exclaimed, and she started running. Violet ran and ran and amid voices asking her to take shelter, she ran until she reached home. There, she started climbing stairs, floor after floor after floor. She kept going up that tower for a time that seems endless, but she finally reached the top. She swiftly opened the door and lay on the floor of the rooftop as the flood reached her body. It tore away her carcass and dug in the scar tissues that covered her body. And as the salt water filled her wounds and sent waves of excruciating pain across her whole body, Violet laid still to grasp it all. The water dug deep through her dead flesh and rotten veins, but she didn’t flinch as she embraced the surge of emotions raping every inch of her fragile existence. Violet could feel again.

 A while after, the flood passed and underneath, the creatures came out to darkness again. Violet had fainted from the pain; she laid still on that rooftop with her light shade of purple skin glazing under the soft rays of the sun, blood dripping from her every wound.