p a l e a

Owl

In his room, he drew his pictures endlessly.
Stretched faces, black holes, warped shapes boundlessly.
And little birds in cages.
Many, many cages.

——

My Addy is two years old today.

5/100 theme challenge: Unbreakable

As a child, I looked out of my bedroom window every morning and said “hello” to the banana spider that lived in the corner.
In those days, I had a stuffed white cat that meowed just like a real one and I carried it with me everywhere I went.
But eventually its sound box stopped working and so did its magic.
Along with the rest of my old toys, I eventually retired it to an old box in the dusty attic.
And eventually my father swept down the banana spider.
She was “moving” – “packing her bags.”

And each day, the house decayed little by little.

One of my friends didn’t show up at school for a few weeks.
His leg was broken.
I wondered why my neighbor couldn’t hear.
My mother said her ears were broken.
My best friend agreed to meet me at the park but I waited alone.
The promise was broken.
One of my classmates always missed class.
Apparently his family was broken.
A woman was taken away from her children.
They said her mind was broken.
The newspaper reported a suicide.
His dreams were broken.

And each day, the world decayed little by little.

But I visited the house where I grew up.
All of the windows were broken except my old bedroom window with a banana spider in the corner.

Familiar

A light liquid, lacking substance like milk and other heavier drinks yet undeniably present. Warmer, it boasts a slight metallic flavor. But at an appropriate temperature, it is refreshing and crisp, smacking of distant glaciers, snowy mountain peaks, and vast blue skies while remaining deceptively bland and elusive to the tongue.

4/100 theme challenge: Rivalry

Month 1 - X complains

Month 2 - X sulks

Month 3 - X is passive-aggressive

Month 4 - X can’t take it anymore

Month 5 - X lets Z bang walls

Month 6 - X let Z shout at night

Month 7 - Y complains

Month 8 - Y sulks

Month 9 - Y is passive-aggressive

Month 10 - Y can’t take it anymore

Month 11 - Y and Z talk loudly

Month 12 - Y and Z play noisy games

3/100 theme challenge: Making history

If you want your name to be read
For years after your death,
Do you become a criminal?
Or a politician?


                                  But truthfully,
                                                                         what’s the difference? 

A Portrait of _______

He was a childish man, stepping through life without thinking of the fingers he trod upon. His mind hadn’t the capability to discern differences in the people around him; when to respect his elders and when to become a role model for the children. In contrast to his facial expressions, his hands were lively, but his signing hardly matched the language’s standards, instead combining the easiest motions with the ones he knew best to create some code of which he was the sole user. He threw his books and made angry gestures with his fingers, but that served its purpose well enough and so the black printed letters remained foreign shapes to him. An elderly woman dictated his lessons, cooked his meals, and cleaned up the path of destruction each day. And in the evenings, she hummed soft lullabies when he cried out from nightmares, after which she wiped the patience-born droplets from her brow and awaited the coming dawn light to rouse her slumbering charge, who closed his golden eyes but four hours a night. When he woke, he demanded breakfast and ate it greedily, disregarding the manners repeated to him at each meal. While he dined, the woman scrubbed away the words rewritten onto his walls every sunrise:

“Who will ever love me? Who will ever love me?” 

2/100 theme challenge: Complicated

Relationships are complicated.
The stronger the knot, the trickier the steps.

Emotions are complicated.
The larger the web, the easier it tangles.

Humans are complicated.
The greater the blocks, the more intricate the puzzle.

Life is complicated.
Yet the more sights to see, the more memorable the trip. 

1/100 theme challenge: Introduction

This marks the start of a 100 themes writing project.
I don’t know if I’ll ever finish. But in the meantime, it will be something I can do for fun.
Maybe I’ll try to write something every week.

I will continue to post character writing to Palea in addition to this.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much from myself.

But without further ado.

Hello. I’m Lindsey. It’s nice to meet you.
I’ve been a bit reluctant about revealing myself so openly on this blog.
Because I wanted the writing to remain faceless and mysterious.
But since this project is more personal than my usual writing, I thought it would be necessary to reveal myself.
I also considered using a pen name.
The truth is, I used to always use the pen name 利益 (リエキ or Rieki).
I signed all of my personal blogs that way. And for useless surveys at my school, I would use that name. For email addresses, too.
It’s the name of one of my earliest characters. It must be about five years old now.
I guess the reason that I did was because I never really liked my name. I just didn’t feel that it fit me well, and being around so many other people with my name made me sick.
Up until high school, I guess my name was fairly popular. But I wasn’t anything like the other girls named Lindsey. And that’s why I wanted a different name.
I admired my boyfriend in high school who actually convinced everyone during his fourth year that his name was Naota.
But he went by a different name than his birth name anyway. He had that freedom, because his real name was too difficult to pronounce.
I think he’s going by Sho now.

Of course, as I got older, using a pen name became troublesome.
I had to change the settings whenever I needed to send emails to my teachers because they wouldn’t recognize the name.
And eventually it became embarrassing.
So I began using it only for personal things. But what’s the point of that if no one actually knows you by that name?
I didn’t drop it completely until last year though. Because I felt that it was really childish of me to continue running away from my identity like that.
And I guess Tumblr helped to cut the ties from my juvenile self for good.
I can’t remember how it happened, but I thought for a long time about revealing my real name.
Someone asked for it one day and from then on it began to spread.
And now nearly everyone knows it.
But now I’m away from so many other Lindseys, and I’ve met so many people around the world where that name isn’t common. I also learned that my parents named me after Lindsey Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac.
So combining all of those things, I feel that I’ve settled into my name at last.
I still don’t love it. But I accept it now.
If someone asked me what I’d prefer to be called, I don’t think I could give an answer.
Other than “Just call me Lindsey.”

Cherry Blossom

So many things have changed.
But that’s reality’s cruel truth, isn’t it?
Even as I try to hold back time, the world keeps turning.

Children grow up.
Grow up to have families.
As one generation ends, another begins.

The delicate white flowers bloom in an instant,
And even though I wish they would never scatter,
Those falling petals remind me that spring will come again. 

An Affair with the Moon

        When the sun sank, I waited and counted the minutes until the fifth hour. I thought I heard footsteps of the doctors who surely read my mind through the spies they embedded in my head, but the sound turned out to be only my heart. As I listened, it chanted, “Now is. The time. Now is. The time,” and I knew I had to leave.
        I escaped. It was snowing and I was quite cold because my shoes had been too chatty. I left them behind so that my escape would be quiet. But as I stood outside in the cold snow, I wondered if I should go back and get them in case they told the nurses where I had gone. The wind pushed me away. The trees whispered sweet things. I looked up and saw that the moon was smiling and she cooed gently for me to follow her. So I did.
        But she liked to pretend to come close and then float back up far into the sky and I got frustrated. I stopped under a tree and my ears ached. A naked branch touched my shoulder and I thought for a moment that I was being followed. I turned to see that it was just a white tree. Its eyes looked at me very coldly and I got scared. I felt like it was staring into my heart and judging how black it was. So I took up my pursuit of the moon again. I didn’t want a tree looking at my heart.
        “Jori.”
        I heard my name and stopped again. I felt like I was gliding over the snow because my feet had become so numb. I thought my shoes had planted a nasty trick by making me leave them behind. With my feet so cold, I would be taken back to the hospital again. I knew those shoes were plotting against me with the way they squeezed my feet and said I was such a worthless boy. I regretted not bringing them and punishing them in the snow. In my anger, I looked around for anything I could use to cover my feet so that I wouldn’t be defeated by my shoes’ trick. A rabbit with red eyes peeked out under a nearby bush. I had never seen a rabbit with red eyes before so I thought it strange that he knew my name.
        “Jori,” it whispered. I knelt down and the snow soaked my pajamas. The rabbit wouldn’t blink and as we stared at each other, I saw that it wanted to kill me. Alarmed by such a tiny animal’s confidence, I stood up suddenly and the rabbit darted off. I thought I was safe that I had scared it away, but then I realized that it must be preparing a trap, so I ran after it. I caught up quickly, even through the underbrush and all of the trees trying to hold me back. I yelled at them that I was trying to capture an evil rabbit. They wouldn’t listen. Trees don’t understand good and evil.
        I ran and ran and my breath burned in my chest and my ears ached with cold. The moon peeked through the branches and tried to make me follow her again, but I had to get the rabbit. At last, snap! I stopped face-to-face with the red-eyed rabbit struggling for life. It had been snatched up by a noose that I knew should have been mine. I suddenly felt sorry for the rabbit. I wanted to cut the rope but I had nothing sharp enough, so all I could do was watch until it finally died.
        I walked round and round that little grove, making up songs to help ease the rabbit’s soul. It seemed to like that because its body swayed and the trees sang, too. But as I sang and walked round and round, tiny black spots danced in front of my eyes and I felt like my head was flying away from my shoulders. And then I felt nothing.