In or Out?

I don’t fit into a box and most of my life people have been trying to figure me out, including myself. During the course of this year I’ve been starting to appreciate that there’s no box big enough to hold the anomaly that is me. A friend sent me an Ani DiFranco song called In or Out which I just managed to listen to. I related. Completely. Thank you Ne. Have a listen y’all…

Guess there’s something wrong with me
Guess I don’t fit in
No one wants to touch it
No one knows where to begin
I’ve got more than one membership
To more than one club
And I owe my life
To the people that I love

He looks me up and down
Like he knows what time it is
Like he’s got my number
Like he thinks it’s his
He says,
Call me, Miss DiFranco,
If there’s anything I can do
I say,
It’s Mr. DiFranco to you

Somedays the line I walk
Turns out to be straight
Other days the line tends to deviate
I’ve got no criteria for sex or race
I just want to hear your voice
I just want to see your face

She looks me up and down
Like she thinks that I’ll mature
Like she’s got my number
Like it belongs to her
She says,
Call me, Ms. DiFranco
If there’s anything I can do
I say, I’ve got spots
I’ve got stripes, too

Their eyes are all asking
Are you in, or are you out
And I think, oh man,
What is this about?
Tonight you can’t put me
Up on any shelf

‘Cause I came here alone
I’m gonna leave by myself

I just want to show you
The way that I feel
And when I get tired
You can take the wheel to me
What’s more important
Is the person that I bring
Not just getting to the same restaurant
And eating the same thing

Guess there’s something wrong with me
Guess I don’t fit in
No one wants to touch it
No one knows where to begin
I’ve more than one membership
To more than one club
And I owe my life
To the people that I love

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10 Things I Hate About You

So apparently this was a movie that I should have seen years ago, but it took me until last year when Jade thrust it apon me insisting that I watch it or else I couldn’t call myself a fan of Heath Ledger if not. True that. Loved the boy’s take on his role, even in a chick flick.

I hate u | by Purple Rain is Taken

I was looking for reasons to be pissed with someone today and all that came to mind was the soppy poem at the end of this movie that made feel quite the opposite of how I need to. Sigh. In case you haven’t watched it, have a read…

I hate the way you talk to me
And the way you cut your hair
I hate the way you drive my car
I hate it when you stare

I hate your big dumb combat boots
And the way you read my mind
I hate you so much that it makes me sick
It even makes me ryhme

I hate the way you’re always right
I hate it when you lie
I hate it when you make me laugh
Even worse when you make me cry

I hate the way you’re not around
And the fact that you didn’t call
But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you
Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all

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Jesus… is a TV Show Host?

Pardon the rather rude title but I’m at odds as to how to react to a bit of news I received a few days ago. It’s been stewing around in my head for a while and I thought I’d let you in on it to see how you’d react to it as well.

A certain church of the folk plans to open a TV and radio station to further help spread the good news to the people they haven’t been able to reach by now. Or at least that’s the assumption I’m making, because why else would a church want to venture into owning their own media if not

Jesus & Elvis in space by Vernavulpe

Now my first reaction is that if an entity has that much money, shouldn’t they focus on if there was a bigger need for it? I was thinking of the IDPs who have no homes to go back to. I mean you read posts like this and you wonder what you can do yourself. Far be it for me to make a decision on how someone else should spend their money, but when it’s a church I guess it becomes a matter of public interest.

Now I’m all for spreading the good news. A friend of mine, non-Christian of course, asked me why the Christian church was so adamant about shoving their religion down the throats of others. I told him that it was the foundation of Christianity. Some know that a man called Jesus, the son of god himself who died that we can all be absolved of sin. This amazing piece of news needs to be spread to the corners of the earth. True, I agreed that some groups can be radical in their approach and thereby come across as forceful or annoying, but I told him that at the heart of it was good intention.

But the more I thought about it, another more crucial quote from the Bible comes to mind. One that will solve everything. End wars. Feed the hungry. Change the world. All the epic stuff. Only if it was believed in. “Love one another as I have loved you”. For me, this means more than spreading the good news of the next life. What’s the point if we can’t get along and help each other in this one? Even Jesus focused on feeding the 5000 before he preached to them after all.

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Poya Moon Rising

The music starts, just as the moon rises and you claw your way through the throng, finding your way into the light. A night meant for dancing into the morning light as your body  takes over and you begin to sway….

Summer moon
On you face
O the wind blows so sweet

Come my way
Come my way
Dance with me

Let us dance
To forget
Let us dance
To remember

All those days
Last summer

A bitter twist and turn, as you find yourself alone. It’s still early. The moonlight hasn’t quite returned to the horizon again, but something’s changed. You can’t put your finger on it, but you know it’s not the same. Your angry at the source of your happiness. It’s a source with no rights into your soul. A source you have no right letting in, in the first place. And as if the mellow moonlight was suddenly struck by lightening, ricocheting itself back to earth, a sharp stabbing pain reaches your heart and you know now… what you’ve been afraid to let go was never within your reach to begin with…

I see the bad moon arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightning
I see bad times today.

Don’t go around tonight,
Well, its bound to take your life,
There’s a bad moon on the rise.

I hear hurricanes a-blowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like were in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye

(please pardon  the poor photography. was taken off my 1.2 mega pixel phone, in the dark, in a very stoned state)

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Contentment is Death

Walking on Clouds by Gilad

A little boy told me once that there’s always one sandwich missing in a sandwich basket. Apparently it was his philosophy in life. I laughed at the time. But as I began to get older I realized that truer words were never spoken. He had the most original way of telling me that nothing in life is complete. That there’s always something that stops any situation from being perfect. It sounds pessimistic in a way.

But it also reminds me of something someone else said. Mr. George Bernard Shaw said that “as long as I don’t have what I want, I have a reason for living. Contentment is death”. I’ve never been content. I guess that means I’m still very much here. It’s an affirmation that I am alive. That I still thirst and hunger and need for more than I have, greater things than are possible.

People tell me I’m too much of dreamer. That in the midst of my pessimism, hope always managed to creep in. Every time life beats me to the ground, I realize that that’s as low as I can ever get and I rise up. Time after time.

It makes you wonder though sometimes. Am I asking for too much to be happy. I look at what I have right now, the opportunities in front of me, the people in my life who love me, my job, my muse, my two amazing canine kiddies and I still want more. Different things than the obvious.

My English lit teacher wrote me a little note when I was leaving school that I know by heart. I see you longing for the finer things in life. Poetry in life and love and in everything you long for. It’s going to be lonely up there. But remember… the air up there is sweeter, rarer.

I think she got the 18 year old me down to a pat. And since I doubt I’ve grown up very much since then, other than to let my search beat me down time after time, I think I still won’t settle for anything less. I owe it to myself to move every mountain in my way. I owe it to myself to never stop searching.

In the midst of it, what really scares me is finding what I’m looking for. What if I find my missing sandwich? What happens when my picnic basket finally becomes complete and all I have left to do is, spread my gingham blanket on the ground and enjoy my day in the sun? Will it be the death of me? (can you see how that wretched pessimist in me creeps in through the cracks in the conversation?)

My teacher was right, my search, my chase has been a very lonely one. It’s an utterly depressing place to be sometimes when I stop and evaluate what I’ve had to come through. I’m still climbing my mountains but sometimes when the route gets a little rocky, it’s nice to have someone give you a hand up.

It’s an infinitely lonely place when no one sees into your soul and really gets you. But that’s not the point of this post. I just wanted to tell you in my own words, the other facet of why my blog is thus named.

I am the missing sandwich because I feel that my purpose is to complete someone’s life. But my blog is also called the missing sandwich because it’s a declaration of my final destination. My desire to be complete and the fact that it’s ok that I’m not quite there yet.

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Love is

This is not about the Brian McKinight / Vanessa Williams song that came out when I was running around in that ridiculous box-pleated contraption called a school uniform. Nor is it about the current blog drama going on. As pissed off as I am about it, I think it’s time to get back to the normal scheme of things.

I wrote this a while ago and while doing a clean-up of my hard drive I discovered it and wondered why I never posted it before. My sentiments on the topic are a tad different now, but I still believe in the essence of it. Have a read…

 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds

– Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare 

I could finish the whole sonnet, but I think its beginning encapsulates my thoughts. It does in its entirety as well, but maybe this post should be about me putting in my own words. 

I’ve heard that love ends. But if it was love to begin with, is that possible? Isn’t love supposed to be something that lasts a lifetime? Isn’t the whole term “love ends” an oxymoron? Love in infinite. Endings are just endings. Journeys end in lovers meeting et al. 

But people tell me that they’ve stopped loving someone. That they fell out of love. Could it possibly be that it wasn’t love at all to begin with then? Ofcourse that in itself sounds ridiculous too. Have we all ever truly been in love with just one person our entire lives? Or have we mistaken other lesser things for love? When someone breaks your heart, does it mean that you stop loving them or do you hurt so much because of the very fact that you love them still? The fact that you don’t have it in your power to stop loving that person. Isn’t that what kills you? 

You don’t look at someone one day and say “I’m going to fall in love with this person”. It just happens. It’s absolutely out of your control. All you can control is what you do, or don’t do about that wonderfully excruciating feeling that creeps up on you secretly and lets you know way too late to push it away. So if we have no control over the beginnings of love, how can we control the end of it, when it’s clearly stated in every holy book, every piece of poetry on the topic, almost every song that it cannot ever end. 

I said almost every song, because there is one that’s caught my fancy a few years ago by The Darkness called “Love is Only a Feeling”. It’s nice to comfort yourself with when something ends or doesn’t even begin. But I wonder to what degree it’s true. Because if love is ONLY a feeling, then by Shakespeare’s claim, no man ever loved, nor did he ever write anything. That seems a classic opener to go into the scholarly debate about Bill Shakes’ identity here, especially because of that claim, but it’s not the topic at hand, so let’s move on. 

Does love end? Can it? Of it does then is it a lesser version of love? Was it love at all? Or do we grow up to the new age concept of love that allows you to love one completely and then move on to love someone else the same way? Marriages made in heaven have ended in hell and the couples have moved on to love and even marry again. They were in love before. They are in love again. Or they have always been on a euphoric high mixed with tolerance of eachother for a certain period of time before the tolerance ran out? How un-romantic, but how very real. 

Do I have to be resigned to this school of thought or can I please continue to believe that love is much, much more than just a feeling?

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Let us confess…

 

Ever read Patrick Fernando’s poignant and aptly worded poem titled “The Fisherman Mourned by his Wife?” It’s one of those pieces that I have always been extremely fond of because of its realistic look at Sri Lankan marriage and relationships. 

The line “let us confess” starts off an information flow that really tugs at the heart. I have this tendency to quote from pieces of literature that have moved me, to help me to come to my point, like in the case with this poem. The last 24 hours in the Sri Lankan blogsphere have been more than strange. It’s easy to say that I was victimized by another blogger, as was my friend and fellow blogger, Jade. But to call ourselves victims is so passé isn’t it? After all, don’t victims generally crawl into holes and stay there until it’s safe to come back out and play again? 

I was saving the Patrick Fernando quote for another post which I wrote a long time ago and was waiting for the right time to post. I read it yesterday and I realized the need for it had passed so it may never see the light of day I guess. Sad, since I think it was one of my best written pieces. Never ye mind that. I have a few things to say and I’ll get right to the point now, since the last few lines were totally off it – 

The story goes a little something like this: 

Jade wrote a beautiful post about me that I was more that merely touched about. Passionately Patient jumped on the bandwagon and wrote a post herself about how that post and some others that I have written have revealed so much about us and made it seem quite strange because the information seemed warped. Both Jade and I commented, giving her the facts and asked her to please edit or remove the post in question. She did and I thanked her for it. Moments later another post appeared on her blog containing two short stories. I hadn’t really had the time to read them and another blogger who did gave me a call and asked me to later on in the evening. Reading them, I realized that one of them contained the advertising industry’s warped, gossipy version of what happened to me a year ago. It was how anyone on the outside who didn’t know my story would have looked at it. 

I have 2 things to tell both Jade and PP based on what I’ve written in the above paragraph and the repercussions of it. Here they are : 

Jade. It’s your philosophies in life that people should adopt, not mine. If I’m a tigress, you’re a firebrand. You’ve got more balls than most men I know and I am proud and honoured to know you. You’re an amazing writer, a talented woman, with great taste in everything including your friends 😉  You’re never afraid to speak your mind and when I shush up and give in sometimes, you remind me of why I shouldn’t. These have resulted in epic blow-ups between the two of us which have brought us much closer as a result and I think the reason is a lack of betrayal. We’ll shoot our mouths off about our opinions of each other shamelessly, but that comes from really knowing one another, which I highly doubt other people have the liberty to do, simply because they don’t know us. Really knowing someone takes a lot more than reading their blog or listening to industry gossip after all. You’re one of the people who helped me to come out of my shell and live a little, which I’m more than exercising now. For that and more I thank you with all my heart. 

PP. You don’t know me & thanks to your repeatedly off opinions of me, I will now disregard your existence entirely. I don’t care who you are, I have done nothing to hurt you and yet you opted to write 2 posts tarnishing me. It’s alright. You’re entitled to freedom of speech and I’m entitled to ignore you. I will say one thing to you before I do though, the base of your story may have been true, but the poor helpless little girl you seemed to have pegged me as doesn’t exist. She never did. If I can take the beating your story said I did and still smile, bring it on. You don’t scare me, no one does. I’m not too worried about anonymity. The reason I blog as themissingsandwich is because the title comes from a philosophy I believe in. Everyone knows who I am. I’ve been tarnished in the papers, by other bloggers, had my life ripped apart and I am still standing. Living. Flourishing. Laughing. No one can bring me down, honey. “Remember : far better than you have sworn to do the same. Go look for them now” (Attia of the Julii)

That being said. Hasn’t there been enough drama on Kottu this year to last us all a lifetime? Enough na?

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The Shooting Star Complex

Here’s a super quick post about something super-silly.  

You know what they say about too much of a good thing? Well, I think I’m getting it right now. In loads of small, varied doses. It may just be me, not knowing how to enjoy the nice, uncomplicated times when they head my way because the complications have bred an ugly sense of familiarity within me, but my mood is not what it should be all of a sudden.  

You see the thing is, like a shooting star, nice times tend to burn out fast with me. I get bored or upset. It’s inevitable with me. And in this case I don’t even know which it is. All that seems certain is the doom and gloom kind of premonition-esque feeling that seems to be setting in. Something will go wrong, the nice mood will fizzle out fast because I don’t know how to enjoy it within limits and then I’ll back in the dumps again. My all or nothing behaviour tends to affect my wellbeing like this, I guess.

Is this girly? Because I’m sure the masculine part of me would just say fuck it, enjoy myself and take what comes in its stride and move on to other things. Things in my life have always had a bit of a shooting star attitude to them though and I guess that’s what I’m almost waiting for… for things to take a turn for the worse because I’m having an overdose of being ok.

Sigh. The silly moods I get myself into, I tell you! 

 

photo credit : Shooting Star by Shadistic

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Sexual Healing

I have a tendency to want to solve things and I’m at my wits end with this one. So maybe you can help me out here. What I need is someone who can give me an opinion without being biased one way or the other.

Here’s the deal, a friend of mine recently said that she had the best sex of her life.

The problem is that from what everyone assumed, it was supposed to be a one-night stand. They come from two different worlds and it just didn’t seem like it was going to lead anywhere. I was a tad concerned for her at first when she seemed to be giving into what was going to happen so easily and then I thought, fuck all these moralistic thoughts. If 2 consenting adults want to have sex, let them! I doubt that I would have stressed about it like that if I was in the situation (all part of my new walk on the wild side attitude I think) so why was I bothering with these thoughts when I knew she was clearly going to have some much needed enjoyment?

That’s not where the problem lies though. That was just my ranting and narcissistically wanting parts of my life in this story as well. Her problem lies in the fact that it was the best sex of her life. Why is that a problem you ask? Well, when one lover makes every other one in her life pale in comparison and the whole incident was treated like a one-night stand… don’t you think it would be an issue? It’s not a case of falling in love. Let’s not over-think it on those levels. But once you have such super sex why be deprived of more of it?

And so my friend wants to find out if he wouldn’t mind repeat performances, much to the chagrin of our friends. They told her to leave it at the fact that she had a good time and not cheapen herself by contacting him. I opened my mouth to echo this trend of thought but somehow the words didn’t seem to come out. And then I wondered, if it was a case of cheapening oneself, the fact that she consented to randomly having sex with someone she barely knew would have done it anyway, right? And like I said before, consenting sex between two single adults isn’t really something to call in the troops about. It ain’t that scandalous. I wish Sri Lanka would get over her cultural quagmire of bullshit so that we could all go to our graves happier to have really lived.

What I did tell her, I told her, with as much sensitivity as I could (freight-train like I think). I said that if the feeling was mutual, he may have tried to get in touch with her, which he hasn’t. So why should she contact him? Men are generally not as awkward about things like this as women, or so that seems to be the assumption with me. If this was between two women, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it telling her to go for it. And this guy isn’t your everyday sort. He occasionally has his dip in a bunch of very nice pools. But she was very different from his usual fucks, to put it crudely. So things may go either way.

But my friend has a fragile ego (don’t all women?) and I don’t want her to get shot down by someone she may have to run into from time to time and feel that sense of shame and awkwardness around him if he doesn’t respond to her. It’s not like asking someone out on a date after all, this is asking for sex. The options in my head right now are these; she could wait for him to approach her, she could go ahead and call him or she could come to terms with the fact that she has one super memory to take with her to her grave. They all come with consequences and some with possibilities.

What say you?

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