word of the day

Alinka Echeverria

daemon 1 |ˈdēmən| (also daimon)noun1 (in ancient Greek belief) a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans.• an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force.

Daemons are good or benevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), and differ from the Judeo-Christian usage of demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans.

temporary spots

my friend, my enemy:

actions have consequences. actions do (do) have consequences. and one day when you show up at my door and i pretend like i'm not home, or i never get your messages, and you say i love you and i say i love you too and it sounds like any other word we enunciated that day (like pass me the salt please, or i'm going to be late), you wonder when exactly you lost your spot.

survival kit: opening day

when a headache will not let go of your brain,
but the morning seems inviting and familiar, like every other Monday that you need to victoriously overcome,
you leave the house as fast as you can,
and wear your favorite colours.

I look at the guitar, he looks at me.

There's a library of sounds to pick.

hey

be serious about something.

Defintion

After our damp skins slid apart

I nearly starved, pulling

on my mother's drained tit.

She used all her strength

to shove me out of her body,

the last link stretched, slashed,

tied in a knot I wear on the beach,

flaunting the twisted emblem

of first rejection, the eye of flesh

that saw love couldn't last.

- Lauren Shakely

secret names

As a kid, I never wanted to become one of those grown-ups who is a "grown-up:" caught up in a superior adultness, and oblivious to the curious world that was waiting to be discovered. And of course, those grown-ups were also less kind and playful around kids, always trying hard to cover their cold exterior and impose our immaturity on us.

But my favorite grown-up was my parents' younger friend Maryam. She was different. She had access to the curious world. She was a writer and a translator, in her late 20's. Her cat's name was Pushkin.* She had short, sharp, black hair and big brown eyes (she would do a trick for me blinking 100 times per second; lashes moving like a butterfly's wings). Her boyfriend was a painter who had been schooled under my father. He used to wear Lenon glasses and had a loud, inviting laugh.

Maryam would dance with me in parties, let me take her hand and give her a tour of my newest hiding place, or tell her secrets about my secret friends.

That glorious couple broke up after a few years. I never asked why.

She got married and went to India for a few months. She got divorced soon after and I didn't ask why.

Maryam became my favorite name.

+++

Right around the time when my 20s began, I noticed that I'm being a "grown-up" grown-up. I just didn't know what to say to little kids, fearing I'd offend them. Or maybe I didn't want to taint their innocence with my adult experiments. But that slowly changed, remembering Maryam.

A few days ago a friend of a friend's dropped by for tea. A beautiful stranger, she walked into my attic holding a blond 3-year-old girl who was tired and sleepy. The mother was only 20. We had tea (and apple cider for the kid). The morning of, cleaning my room and making it more suitable for two, I'd found a doll I bought in a flea market two years ago. I hid it in my closet. And when the model-mother and the small girl were about to leave, I gave the doll to her.

"What's her name?" the girl shyly asked.

"It's a secret. If you're a good mommy, she will tell you what her name is."

+++

I hear Maryam's lives in New York. She has a baby now. She continues to write.

I miss telling her secrets.

word of the day

kaleidoscope |kəˈlīdəˌskōp|nouna toy consisting of a tube containing mirrors and pieces of colored glass or paper, whose reflections produce changing patterns that are visible through an eyehole when the tube is rotated.• [in sing. ] a constantly changing pattern or sequence of objects or elements : the dancers moved in a kaleidoscope of color.

* image: Kandinsky - Movimiento 1

PR

Public Relations

Pathetic Ramblings

Punctual Resonation

Pubic Reoccurrence

Punitive Regurgitation

Passive Rage

Proud Rant

Peculiar Resemblance

Press Release

Panting Roach

Preverbal Rivets

Pedagogical Reek

Prime Rationale

Profit Rack

demian

Thou shalt certainly not kill -- nor rape and kill girls. But you haven't yet reached the stage where you can understand what 'permitted' and 'forbidden' really means. You have only tracked down part of the truth. The rest is still to come, you can be quite sure of that. You have now had an urge in you for about a year that is stronger than everything else and is considered 'forbidden'. . . What is forbidden is not permanently so; it can change. Even today any man can sleep with a woman once he has been to the priest with her and got married.

- Demian / Hermann Hesse

happiness

happiness

may be the undercooked chicken, respectfully devoured

or wine spills that missed your pants.

happiness

rests within sacred chasms of dialogue, elevated to a beam

taking turns wearing a glove

and two pockets full of change, becoming one.

dear diary

soap me.

commonly and casually

it happens the love

smeared over two bodies in a bath

soaps slip on and marry the limbs

boiling pots moan in the kitchen

cold tiles shiver with anticipation

(hearing heavy heartbeats echo and repeat)

and he returns, bringing fog back from the sea

unruly fireflies hide in the corridors

lamps look for a shadow to hunt

(the window breathes, the clock continues)

and she returns with leaves to burn

commonly and casually

the story begins.

shared secrets

INTERVIEWER

Do you feel you have any conspicuous or secret flaw as a writer?

NABOKOV

The absence of a natural vocabulary. An odd thing to confess, but true. Of the two instruments in my possession, one—my native tongue—I can no longer use, and this not only because I lack a Russian audience, but also because the excitement of verbal adventure in the Russian medium has faded away gradually after I turned to English in 1940. My English, this second instrument I have always had, is however a stiffish, artificial thing, which may be all right for describing a sunset or an insect, but which cannot conceal poverty of syntax and paucity of domestic diction when I need the shortest road between warehouse and shop. An old Rolls-Royce is not always preferable to a plain jeep.

From the Paris Review. "Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40" by Herbert Gold

chatter box

"You know her right?"

"Mmmm . . . not exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"I know a different version of her than you do."

confidential

when i went over my bank account last week, a few rather costly habits of mine shamelessly revealed themselves. (other than cab-rides and sushi meals and hard-cover books and uncomfortable shoes, of course)

being a writer, and a freelance reporter, has meant endless hours at all the (nice) coffee-shops in my vicinity. i mean, a girl's gotta have her double espresso, followed by a soy macchiato, followed by a biscuit and jasmine tea, no?

no.

a girl has to buy fair trade coffee beans and grind her own. so now i'm committed to lock myself in my apartment and pour over this vintage desk (that i stole from my mom's house when she was moving) on a daily basis.

this post is one result of this commitment. four interviews left to transcribe, must be the other.

* illustration by : kasia matyjaszek