savage drivel

[savagedrivel-blog]

Come to Me

Brightly-colored embroidered trousers on

Exuberantly, I whirled with

Frightening clashes of color and sound

I kneel by the sea,

its reflection wavering silver

Waves yearning for me - 

One. Two.

A ripe golden moon

Hanging like a peach off the tree

Selene, mother, talk to me.

One. Two.

A gentle whisper in my ear

“Come to me - “

So I step into the sea.

One. Two. Three.

[savagedrivel-blog]

shot vial

Quick quirk of an eyebrow

Hint of a tight-lipped smile

Hand to forehead in consternation

Disgusted lip curl for awhile

Lie to me, I dare you--

A sprig of rosemary

One spray of Chanel No. 5

Swig of cherry whiskey

If only I were Merlin

Yet, all the same

I seek your grave.

[savagedrivel-blog]

This Is What I Am

Puffy perfect clouds float across the sky

Congruent with the curve of a swan’s neck

I, a lone offspring

Trembling

You with the charming baby blues

How can you understand what

it is like to be brown

Dull

You with the glistening golden locks

How can you understand what

it is like to be brown

Dull

You with the sparkly jelly pens

How can you understand what

it has been like to be brown, if you were

Shadow and straw

I am a rocking horse!

Filled with sawdust, so knowing what

it is like to be brown

Dull

You have pried and pushed and pulled

I am a thing restrained

Without tongue

[savagedrivel-blog]

forgotten? maybe not

being college-aged children, my friends and i decided to play a game of manhunt - hide and seek but with teams and a “jail” that people went to after being caught. and of course, being college-aged children, we played it at 10pm.

i can’t outrun or outsmart anyone, so i know my best bet is to hide and stay hidden. i find this gigantic patch of bushes with my friend, and i crawl underneath and lie down in the dirt. i even take off my shoes so the soles can’t be seen.

it’s 10:35 and the game should be over. no one has even come close to finding me. there are bugs crawling over me, and in the morning i know i’ll find mosquito bites. a bug tries to crawl in my ear and i angrily swat it away.

i hear people calling my name and i think it has to be a trick. then i hear the friend who hid with me calling my name and i realize the game is probably over. nonetheless, i’m suspicious. 

they leave and i’m left in the silence. do you know the feeling when everyone’s parents have come but yours? it’s a gnawing, prickly feeling that’s rotten with abandonment and resentment. all of a sudden, i recall this terrible chinese folk tale or story or novel - i can’t remember where it’s from, and i think i may have filled in the gaps on my own.

     a little girl goes to a market by the sea with her parents. it’s a huge festival, and the girl gets separated from her parents. she wanders off and doesn’t hear her parents calling. eventually, night falls, and her parents have given up, thinking that she might have run away or been kidnapped or found a place to stay. but the little girl is there on the other side of a hill, looking up at the moon. the moon goddess tells the girl to come to her, to walk into the sea. she obeys and drowns.

i become determined not to come out unless someone truly, genuinely finds me. i think i will be the girl that no one finds, the girl that people forget about. in a way, i wanted to know whether my friends would give up or not.

luckily, the person who hid with me originally saw my legs under one of the bushes (she used a flashlight app). when i finally crawled out, there were hugs all around - i didn’t realize that everyone had become so concerned that they were about to tell our resident assistants (RAs) and/or call the police. i feel very, very sorry that i worried my friends so much, but i’m also glad that i was found.

[savagedrivel-blog]

drop

pitter patter

droplets

mom’s egg drop soup

amorphous graceful yellow

swimming oblivious, how insignificant

When does the sky decide to rain?

ball, heavy water

shimmery mist, graceful lucid

        crystal

Hail pelting the sidewalk

cannot come from the chitter chatter of the

Sun

[savagedrivel-blog]

life goal: go to museums alone

suggested reading: (sort of the opposite of a tl;dr) James Cuno, Whose Muse?

[savagedrivel-blog]

oldie but goodie

car rental guy: so what brings you to town?

dad, not looking up from paperwork: ok

[savagedrivel-blog]

family

been reading lots of poetry...i’m really starting to enjoy frank o’hara (reading rec: “why i am not a painter”)

i really did not do enough reflection in high school, to be honest...what it does it mean to have family? what is the mother-child bond supposed to be like? 

coming from a culture that values unemotional responses over heart-on-your-sleeve responses, i feel that i am at quite a disadvantage

i’m finally realizing that maybe my family isn’t quite so normal and i’m not merely being melodramatic

[savagedrivel-blog]

college

i’m so busy!!!!!! i’ve got hundreds of pages to read every week...it might’ve been 300ish pages? life of a humanities major...

but at the same time, i love my professors and their passion for working with students and their passion for their field. i feel so incredibly lucky to be able to go to a university where professors actually. care. about their students! imagine that

passe sentences aside, i never realized how necessary coffee was until now 

[savagedrivel-blog]

i was right

i got horrible food poisoning before going to duke.

i mean horrible - i really mean it

like vomiting 16 times horrible and going to Urgent Care and getting an IV drip because i was so dehydrated

fun fact: i have really small veins so drawing blood is always a struggle!! and when i was dehydrated, they collapsed!!!! 

thankfully i’m better now.

[savagedrivel-blog]

anxious

about leaving for college! i’m sitting in the airport waiting to board...and I feel a vague feeling of regret (?) but I don’t regret anything specifically. i’ve checked off everything that i’ve wanted to do: catching up on my reading list, hanging out with my friends one last time, having more dinners with my parents, hanging out more with my boyfriend <3.

i wish i could be transported to childhood again, with my adoring and normal (!)/younger parents. i’m not ready to be independent!!! and after this is so much more independence...

but most of all, i’m hoping that my parents will be okay! planning to write them long letters....

[savagedrivel-blog]

i’m a real life dancing princess

there’s that grimm brothers (?) story of the 12 dancing princesses who dance the night away every night and have completely worn out shoes. i, too, suffer from wornout shoes, but i suspect this is due to the way i walk, heel first, rather than an evil king and his devious princes.

[savagedrivel-blog]

The yellow rice and chicken dish I cooked for dinner today! Recipe creds go to Budget Bytes. 

I actually quite enjoy cooking, unlike most of my family. The chemistry aspect of it is quite interesting, and being a sort-of foodie, I love tasting new flavors.

[savagedrivel-blog]

somehow i think i ought to be suffering

“About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters” - Musee de Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden

When I first read Auden’s poetry, I thought the rhyme schemes present in many of his poems were too ordinary and formulaic. Although I do love modern free verse, I’ve come to appreciate his genius; somehow, he manages to convey his meaning so poignantly by USING the rhyme scheme instead of working around it.

My last few days have been so peaceful and tranquil that I fear something terrible is going to happen. I’ve spent the last hour looking up my next recipe (which I believe is going to be this chunky lentil and vegetable soup), resting my ankles, and shopping for school supplies. This doesn’t seem right, somehow, but maybe I’m just a sadist.

[savagedrivel-blog]

what is going on

disregard the previous post because...my mom stuck one of my favorite bookmarks into this half-water bottle with dirt inside (a “potted plant”).

1: this makes NO SENSE. what the actual fuck? i really think my mom has lost some of her reasoning and judgment and logic skills.

2: i tried to throw away the “plant,” seeing as it is mine and i received it from a class project. my mom literally took it out of the trash.

3: she completely blew up after i asked her about the other bookmark, which also has sentimental value.

i mean, this is a rant about a bookmark, which is admittedly trivial, but the bigger problem is the logic or lack thereof that my mom has exhibited.

[savagedrivel-blog]

grateful

I don’t relate at all to sappy, sentimental posts about how “my mom/dad/uncle/aunt/grandparent is my best friend and I owe everything to her and I couldn’t have made it without her/his support these last few years.” I like to think of myself as an independent woman who is capable of asking for help or figuring out things on her own.

But the days are starting to count down, and it’s finally sinking in that I’m going to move thousands of miles away for college, and I will be completely on my own. I feel truly guilty, in a way, because my parents have sacrificed everything for me to attend college. It’s been ten years, maybe, since we have taken a family vacation, and my parents are very frugal. 

My parents will officially be empty nesters when I move out, and that is going to be a very tough transition, so much that I wish I had made more memories and not been so brusque. The best I can do now is to attempt to relay my gratitude for their help, especially my dad’s. I saw someone on Facebook use the term “balls-to-the-wall,” or someone who goes all the way, and that weirdly does describe my dad’s efforts. Just recently, his workplace went through a massive reorganization, and he said he probably wasn’t going to be able to attend my summer flute concert. But the day came, and I saw him in the audience.

My dad and I are alike in many ways - facial structure, temperament, love of playing cards - but I doubt that I can ever match my dad’s dedication and loyalty to family. There have been so many times where I was pressed for time and needed to buy this ONE item for a project, and he came through and drove me to Staples or Safeway or whatever store. 

My mom, on the other hand, has never been as involved, for many reasons. Still, I appreciate her small gestures, like cleaning my room, which would rarely get cleaned otherwise, and helping me to find the myriad items I have misplaced over the last few years.

I really was wiser when I was little, before I spent all this time getting my educashun.

[savagedrivel-blog]

this..is me. i’m unamused.

on a related note, why is my face so asymmetrical??? My mouth is a crooked line.