11 March 2012

The surprise I don't know

1. What you live for
Why do you stay up so late?
Don Paterson

I’ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.

So I collect the dull things of the day
in which I see some possibility
but which are dead and which have the surprise
I don’t know, and I’ve no pool to help me tell—
so I look at them and look at them until
one thing makes a mirror in my eyes
then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.
This is why I sit up through the night.
Not love, not meaning, not happiness, but surprises. That one can find something in the dull and that love, meaning and happiness will one day give us a blink.

2. Rainfire

Seeing the best pyro-musical show in my life incidentally happened on my birthday. Last night, on my second week of watching the 3rd Philippine International Pyro-musical Competition, all I could think of was how some of the fireworks were similar to the spray of water. Not exactly a ground-breaking comparison; but then there was Canada, who went from flirting with my imagination to satiating my desire to be awed, with fireworks set to Amanda Marshall's 'Let it rain'. That section in their display made me—and I trust the rest of those who brought their heart with them—maudlin and dumbfounded.

Top Shelf