I had a moment.
You must have experienced them at least once or twice. When you feel that in that moment, you are witnessing something significant, something that life has placed out there to reach you and only you. It teaches you one of her many lessons and to ignore it, well, its a sad waste. Some people feel that the moments that really matter are those when happiness is abundant, when life is at its peak, I'm sad to say this but life's beauty comes in other forms.
Maybe you'll get me better if I explain the moment. I was typing on the computer, and my 11 year old sister, wanted to close the conjoining door to keep the air-con within her room. But the thing is, closing that door would cut me off from the wireless internet that my computer was using, as the frequency seems to travel through her room from the living room to where I was sitting in the master bedroom. So I had a stand -off with my sister. My foot refusing to let her close the door and her tugging at it. She was adamant at getting her way, but due to the superiority of my foot, no amount of strength coming from her would close that sliding door.
So there she stood, and there I sat in my chair. Me sitting there with an eyebrow raised in goading pride, and her standing there with her hand on the door, her face and eyes turning redder by the second; she glared back at me in an expression of hurt and anger. Then the tears started streaming down her face, two of them making tracks down her cheeks, straight lines that carved into her face as though they'll be the same way she'll cry years from now. Her face phased out as if I saw a reflection of what would come in the future.
It gripped my heart. The image wrangling from me, not the emotion of guilt, but a profound and encompassing poignancy, that made me want to weep. In that rare moment, I asked her with such empathy and solemnity, that in any other tone would be ridicule.
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"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Stop. Stop. Stop! You can't do this. You can't just leave everything to me."
"I can't take this anymore. I just didn't know it would be so... bad."
"What do you mean by this? This is our life. You knew what you were walking into when you took those vows. Do they mean nothing to you now?"
"I don't know. I can't handle this life anymore. I feel like I'm dying in here, John. I need to get away from here."
"What about the kids? Do they mean nothing to you as well?"
"Don't do this to me, John. Its... just going to be for a while, 'till I get my head right."
"So what am I going to tell the kids? That their mother walked out on them to go for a joy ride? That she did it because she couldn't cope?"
"Tell them what you like, John. I promise that I'll be better when I get back."
"Well, we won't be here when you get back."
"I love you."
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Well, its still slightly hazy right now, right? This is what happens when I fill in the details.
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The sound of scurried footsteps upstairs drew John's attention. Climbing up and finally entering their bedroom, he stops, mouth agape at the sight of his wife, Helen furiously flinging clothes into an open suitcase.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Helen tears a shirt off the hanger and throws it into the suitcase, and rushes back to the closet to rip another hanger off the bar.
The Wood is just in the midst to closing its eyes, breathing its final whispers among the twig-attached tangerine lisps of leaves. Every moment should be like this, the final peaceful moments of sleep. Blissfully quiet, the stillness so thick that to sup upon it would be downing maple syrup sweet, drowzy, luscious.
The Wind brushes past, scintillating upon the tips of leaves and tired branches. They leave, fluttering to the ground in the millions, a populous migration back down to Earth, after spending half a year in the Heavens. Shush, shush, shush, Apricot Rainfall. You want to run through it, have it graze past your face, swing about in its glory, and let it just pour down on you. All of this orange are the last remembrances of fire the months before.
Yet every day should be like this, insouciant harmonious weather. Cold fire that doesn't burn, picturesque scenery that doesn't blind, instead imprinting themselves upon memory as if the perfect day had come at last.
Don't break, my Fall.
They bloomed like flowers on the wall. Chipping stone in star-burst patterns under the rat-tat-tat of the gun. It was the quiet before the storm that day in the hallowed halls of Virginia Tech. Time had slowed normality to an ironic tableau of happy faces to quivering hands splayed out across the floor.
No sooner had the media picked up on the cold malevolence that was Cho Seung-hui, fingers had already splattered the papers with ink, dishing out judgement on how his life had fallen through the cracks. With the scrutiny, his name now holds among those of Ted Bunty and the Zodiac Killer in the hallmarks of history -- unadulterated media glorified terror.
Oh, how erred a view! What graceless a coverage of their lives! When do we not forget that the focus on them -- instead of him -- is more befitting their memory, those whose names have now blossomed upon the holocaust wall.
Remember humanity not inhumanity, then these words need not have been said.