This is addressed to you who expanded me beyond my 5”1 ft. frame as if I am the lettered world.

I am painfully back in the arena of kicking pages; the coliseum of inventoried life.

If I owe the world a smile, I paid for it the most difficult way.

I am no longer shocked to the weirdness of the simulated living process (in my draft, the word “emotional” was scribbled instead of the faintly defiant “simulated”. The word “living” was nowhere to be found).

That I should return to the space which commenced this personal imbroglio is one cause of my very own bewilderment.

Who are you----reader/s of this nondescript entity?

That I should particularize this in one drawn-out, perpendicular narration, smacks of exhibitionism. I still have a trying time associating something sacred like private existence as part of public dominion. Everyone sees amusement in wanting a piece of it. When it is already out there, suitable enough to mount a conversation in coded elegance----torn, shredded, pieced, squished, analyzed---what is left?

From this peeled corn’s point of view, what is left is similar to a squid who skimmed by the thrown kernels, marooned in the deepest of seas, eyes bulging to the seamless patterns of currents. If that squid has a vocabulary of four words, it mutters : “Tshcgjtyiytfhts, (for this could be the only squidly salvo of any confused squid, its reservoir of four million other words quaffed by its own tentacles : “ How could that happen?”).

To anyone fascinated as to how this personal dilemma is being resolved (it is a work, not in progress, but in germination), the squid has a pat answer, being a sensitive mini-octopus : “I am thankful it happened.”

Even as I write laggardly, something phenomenal is happening to this computer. You know what it is if you identify yourself with that squid.

Together with the manufactured alteration of my world, the following things, going by the squid’s eureka, thankfully happened :

1. I realized that the people who really know me have not been met by myself where I am consciously aware of their presence. I am in the company of voices, sound effects, printed words, actions, hairstyles, critters and birds. I am connected with them, unbelievably, through various ways. (Insert wink to those whose lightsabers bore into drawing boards).

2. That I now say baby an awful lot of times without necessarily pertaining to infants. I still love the sight of tykes. Pink feet, plump cheeks.

3. Some books I own have unexpectedly out-of-place paragraphs as if the authors themselves have sleepy doubles. This made me less critical. That is the happy point, not the modification.

4. I really do HAVE a million names now, ascribed by the number one people. Even when I am a silent bum, I am re-baptized daily.


5. This requires another paragraph that contains…..


The world is no longer a world that I want to carry. A lot of people are fixing it, even beyond my act of faith. I can leave it revolving for all I care and I need not sift the things going on in each of its rotation—accurate or not accurate. I am handling it now less combatively.

Instead, I will pet the world. With my newfound silence.

I go by the moment and act on it instinctively. Instinct that had been polished by the four walls of the bedroom which had become my mall of existence. I either shut-out or open. There are no middlegrounds to explore. It re-shaped me into somebody that I have not discovered and which I am still trying to learn.

I re-acquianted myself with that one authority whom I neglected in consulting for the past years : my own face. I started counting the moles and freckles. (I did not know I have lots of them near my ears). I have seen favored movies and I do not even know my face’s terrain?

I need to decide if I am comfortable layering myself with this new skin. I could not do so by peeling away my old skin. It shall remain and it will. Will it weigh me down? That remains to be seen.

I have so much in mind but I could not find the key to unlock the other door to it.

To all of you who have seen me and smiled, it is now my time to repay the gesture. J

Lastly. Because this is the most important squidly bravura, being the cream of the sponged content : I fell in love with Cher. Still am.

In my world, Cher is a he (thank you very much for just acting silly. It is lovely.)