Juicy Raindrops

This recipe makes one beautiful pie-ce (of art). Serves 4.

Ingredients:

5 cups of fresh venous blood

3 cups of naked vulnerability

1 tablespoon of heartfelt tears

1/2 teaspoon of sweat

A dash of loneliness

A sprinkle of disaster

A pinch of desperation

A slice of life-received lemon

A sprig of self doubt (optional)

Procedure:

Throw all ingredients into a saucepan and apply heat. Cook for 5 to 12 hours and serve hot. Garnish with that sprig of self doubt and a slice of life-received lemon.

~~~~~~

An artist is somehow able to take these ingredients and transform them into the art that you see, admire and even dismiss or criticise.

This is to the artist. Whatever your medium. Words, paint, soil, food, glass, clay, resin, wood, oil, notes or instruments.

You are magic.

Pure, true magic. And your art matters.

They are works of heART!

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

Inspired by a conversation with Ahsia.

I love the night. I always have.

We know each other well.

It kept me company when I was alone and it gave me cover and shielded my pain and tears from the world. Now that I think of it, you could call the night a friend of mine. We do know each other well.

You’ll find that I write more in the nighttime. Particularly about things that i am feeling. The words flow easier then, as if shielded by the night, I do not have to be anyone but who I am and so the truths come out. Mark Twain said, “Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth”. The night is my mask. My shield, my cover, my protection, my friend.

And what do I have to say tonight?

So much. So very much that I could fill oceans and they would still overflow with my words and the depth of my emotions right now. I let it pile up. I had work to do so I didn’t bother purging. I haven’t written in months. So it piled up and now, finally, it’s breaking apart and I can’t even identify what all the emotions are.

Loudly though I can feel dejection and a sense of loss, as if I am in mourning. I’m not sure who or what but it’s in there. I’ll try to sort them all out over the next few weeks, months, years.. and if they choose to flow as words, i will return to write here.

That’s all.

May the night be with you.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

I said I would never again write of you.

But you showed up again

In the craziest and most unforeseen way.

Just when I had finally stopped looking around the corner for your approach.

My heart lurched and now I can’t seem to stop the words from flowing.

You’ve successfully made a liar of me, Ray.

And I wish I could hate you for it.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

Shattering is a silent affair.

I think I’ve written something about this here before.

But you see, I forgot - like man is wont to do.

It wasn’t until i knelt on the cold hard ground with my arms wrapped around myself to stop my body trembling that i remembered.

I remembered a lesson i should not have forgotten.

As quiet tears that would leave tracks on my skin fell from my eyes

My arms holding on tight as if to stop the pieces from falling.

Fighting to keep me in one piece.

Alas, it was a lesson i needed to remember.

So it came in a way that would prevent me from forgetting it ever again.

It tore me apart.

And when - WHEN i put myself back together, the lesson will this time remain as lines of fracture on my skin. I will highlight and colour them with gold lacquer and set myself on fire.

They will call me Kogane no joō.

A woman repaired by gold.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

She said:

If you decide that you want to sleep in tomorrow, it’s okay. Even with your deadlines. If you decide that you would rather garden than go for this week’s team meeting, that’s fine too. And if you decide that you want to have pot noddles at 2am, I will help you cook it.

Me:

Are you trying to trick me here? Reverse phycology maybe? Or trying to guilt me?

Her:

No. I am trying to show you how you should be loved and how you should love yourself. If you need to take a breather - do it. Your heart has never responded well to captivity and shackles. And without your heart, you are barely here.

My legs shook.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

I read somewhere recently (or i might have heard it on TV actually) that people who have trouble letting go are those who refuse to accept reality. I translated that to mean that people like that are simply deluded.

I consider myself a realist.. but, if my brief history is to be considered, maybe that belief is just another delusion.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

1346/031220

I both love and hate things that pull emotions out of me. Especially emotions that i am not quite ready to face or deal with yet.
I was doing well. Waking up early, working on my art and feeling my body get stronger, leaner and healthier than the mess i had made of it. But I’ve lost it. Again. And all the progress i might have made. And I’m having trouble accessing that frame of mind again.

I am fighting what feels like a shut down. I feel like a trial is coming up ahead and I don’t know how i am going to deal with it. I am not ready for whatever it is. But i am powerless to stop or prevent it. And i do not know how to prepare for it either.

Is this how Dorothy felt watching the hurricane come and getting caught in it? Helpless and afraid and just hoping to find solid ground under her feet again? But when her feet finally reconnected with the earth, it wasn’t in a land she knew at all. It was a foreign place with her house in shambles, a witch was out to get her and she had no way to make it back home.

1727/051220

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

I don’t usually make the popular decision. Or the easy one. But I always know that it’s the right one. Even when I don’t like it. Even when it leads to moments like these when I am scrolling through my phone looking for who to call. I know who I want to talk to and therefore no body else will do.

But I am still scrolling.

You see, this is what I meant when I told you that I had to learn to live without you before you left. Because I know myself more than you ever will. And I know that you mean enough that your absence will leave a space. A space that will be felt. Because I am a feeler, I’ll feel it more than most. Yes, more than even you. No matter that you think your feelings are greater than mine now. I just listen to you and I smile inside. Like I said, I know me more than you.

And now here I am.

Watching the rain and missing you. I know you probably hate me now and I can live with that. I know you’d hate me more for that... and I can live with that too. I know I broke your heart. But there was never any chance of a future for us and you know that as well as I do. And I have played these games before and I don’t give my heart anymore.

You think now that our time together were the best days of your life but you’re young. And you’ll see a hundred better days. So don’t glorify those days or put them on a pedestal. You’ll only smear this new beginning of yours.
Don’t remember me.
Live your life.
Be happy.

Don’t remember me at all.
Because Lord knows if i could, I wouldn’t remember you either.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

For Abe

2049/290620

It’s officially been 10 years since we went our separate ways.

It feels .. not quite like yesterday but like a couple of weeks ago.

Feels more like 2 weeks ago than 520 weeks.
That’s how much the pain we inflicted has kept me in the past.
I became more cautious and deliberate
I looked before I leaped and most times I didn’t leap at all

It’s not all you. But it started with you.

They asked me if I loved you. And I lied.
Consistently.
That I did when I wasn’t sure and that I didn’t when I did.
And here we are now.

I swear to myself that I am not waiting for you still.
And I pray in my heart that you don’t make a liar of me again.

1 decade
10 years
520 weeks
3,653 days
87,672 hours
5,260,320 minutes

315,619,200 seconds

Such huge numbers, yeah?
Such a very long time
Too long to be hung up on the same boy.

So this is the last one.
Officially.

Good bye Ray.
I will never write of you again.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

2331/311020

I have realised one fundamental way in which i am different from the versions that came before. This vessel has always valued and glorified relationships. If you’ve been here long enough, you might have seen me refer to them as the jewels in my treasure box. Whenever I look through my scrap/slum books made in elementary and high schools, it shows. I collected poems about friendship and wrote so many myself.

But the woman i am today.. well, she isn’t as invested. She is able to end relationships in an instant and while i knew it was so, i didn’t fully understand how i had become that way.
I was contacted by Lola. Again, if you’ve been here long enough then this is not a name that’s unfamiliar to you. She was my best friend growing up but we grew apart after Uni when life really began. And while we were chatting I couldn’t help but think of a time when i would have given up an arm for her. And in that moment I realised what had happened to me.

I formed attachments. Deep ones. And in my mind, they were forever. “If i love you today, then i will love you forever” I’ve written that several times before because it was simply how my heart and mind worked. It made letting go of bounds i had already formed nigh impossible. What I couldn’t understand after a while was why it seemed like I was the only one who felt and thought that way. I watched my jewels - one after another - make conscious decisions that jeopardised our relationship. It started with Kaku - and you know the rest. I didn’t understand because any decision that jeopardised our relationship was never an option for me. It felt like i was only convenient for a time and once a more tempting offer came along, i was left with the broken strings and questions i would never really get answers to. They left gashes on my heart - especially those first two. But then i began to learn.

Systematically i stopped believing in those words spoken by the tongues of men and women. “Always”, “Forever”, “Mine” - I realised that belief it those words was what had gotten me into trouble in the first place. All those nights I stayed up questioning my sanity and loveability - “Why do people leave me? Was it me?” - Closure I never got and the particularly vicious ones leaving me with open ended phrases like “If we are meant to be..” further tying me down with brutal invisible chains because, of course, I believed we were - so i would wait. It was perhaps a trial and testament of my love. All the great love stories have them. Separated for millennia and finally reunited till the end. So i would bear this. Can you tell that i had such an unfortunate hopelessly romantic heart?

Lola and i used to celebrate every single anniversary every year. Counting up to the day we would celebrate 10 years of friendship. We stopped embodying that word a year before the year we had so anxiously awaited. On the flip side, Baa and i don’t have an anniversary - yet Facebook alerted me that we had been friends for 10 years last month. I honestly didn’t know that we had known each other that long. But this makes my point too.

Today, I don’t go into relationships expecting them to last beyond a season.. or the very next day. I simply believe in enjoying what we have here and now, and parting when the time comes with no bitterness or resentment. We humans are ephemeral creatures after all - it makes sense that any bonds we form be the same as well.

I can’t believe it took me almost 30 years to figure that simple fact out.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

0634/211120

These days i am always up for the sunrise

As light overtakes the night, i am awake to feel the energies change
To watch the ghouls scamper for cover from the blazing light of the sun
I used to be like them too
Afraid of the new day, afraid of the light
Afraid of what it will reveal
But now, i willingly go to it.

I wake up early, have a cup of tea and water my plants.
It’s become a kind of routine for me.
With the world (and house) still quiet,
I can pretend that there’s only just me
And sometimes i can even hear myself think again.

As the sun rose again today
I laid in bed, wrapped under the covers
Once more part of the other world and despising the sun
Not only for rising but for rising so very bright.
It was in this moment that I finally understood the two women inside of me.
You see I have been wondering a lot these days
Am i Jas of the light pretending to be Marie of the dark?
Or am I Marie of the dark, pretending to be Jas of the light?
It turns out that i am neither.

Jas was never of the light.
She is the quiet dark in me.
She is muted and she is guarded
She is almost without mass.
I craved her elegance and serenity.
Her levelheadedness and quiet resilience.
I have always felt her in there
Sometimes she invades my dreams too
At some marked points in my life i feel her presence stronger than others
Mostly in moments of great pain, shame and disappointment.
It made me believe that as a survival instinct,
I would eventually become her full time
And this both pleased and scared me simultaneously
Because what then would happen to Marie?
Jas can be cold and unfeeling,
completely detached from things and people.
But somehow i think she might feel things even deeper than Marie.

Marie is of the light.
She is who i default back to when i am not thinking.
So she is a greater part of my inborn personality
She is loudly-happy, boisterous and she takes up room
She carries her heart on her sleeve and in her eyes
Her energies seep out of her every pore.
She also turns vicious when triggered
She is confrontational and short-fused.
She feels everything strongly and wildly
She feels like a bomb waiting to go off sometimes.
She doesn’t always say the right thing
because she can be terribly honest and oblivious
Which really can come across as her being self centred
But not because she is being intentionally selfish or conceited
She’s just 100% into what she’s doing and following her joys.
Her light can create a shadow sometimes
As bright light is wont to do
and other times it simply spreads more light to dark places.

I understand the two better now.
Dark is not evil, light is not divinity
One is not better than the other,
One is not the opposite of the other.
They are two facets that are all me
One is gained of birth
One is gained from nurture
Together, they are Jasmine Marie - the vessel.

I am supposed to make them one,
in concert and not opposing forces.
I should use the calm self-control and restraint of Jas
to keep my chakra and energies inside and balanced

She will be the forcefield around me as i interact with the world
Yet i should be able to create a concentrated firelight in my palm
and pour it into my heart’s passions and other creatures

without burning them to a crisp.

Jas is protection.
Marie is sanity.
Both of them are me.

Knowing this now, I hope to live better.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

021120

And for the first time I had the thought.

What if I am not really two women?

What if there’s just me.. and the woman I think I should be?

But which one is which?

Which one is me?

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

they had begun to worry and it showed
and i even felt a little guilty
so I made an effort.
i even went out for dinner so they wouldn’t be alone
and i provided the entertainment again - as usual.
i played my role, did my part.
and as soon as she got the chance, she made me regret it.
twice, in one night.
so i am accepting my mugun hali
her september gift to me this year
i will learn to say “NO”
even if i have to cut off my tongue to get the words through my pearly gates
but they will be spoken
and finally,

finally, i will have peace.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

091120

When two people are together
Or have an opportunity to be together
Take it now.
Grab it with both hands and head for the docks
Sail on seas that will take you to your utopia and revel in it.
While you can.
But if you make the decision to walk away from it
No matter what your noble intentions are
Then don’t cry to me when the opportunity never presents itself again.

I was lied to before with words of destiny
And my hungry craving heart believed it even as it agonised
Even as it bled.
The lie was the lullaby that put me to sleep
I held it close and cuddled with it every time the ghouls came out
Every time I was lonely, heartbroken and in pain
Even when I began to recognise it for the lie it was
I held it still and let it soothe me with its false promises of someday
Until it got all worn down and tattered.
Or maybe i did.

Years went by
Years in which he found his mate
Got married and became a father.
With each great, jubilant achievement
I wondered how then I would fit into the picture in this fantastical future
Until one day I looked at the portrait
I mean really looked at it
Without the rose coloured lens of the lie
And realised a horrible truth;
There was no place for me in it at all
I don’t belong in this story.
Not even as an extra or a footnote.

I stood there
with not even crumbs to save or ashes to bury
Nothing.
As if it had never been.
It was gone, vanished - just like that
After romancing me with its lying tongue for years
It had simply left me standing out in the cold.
Years that had passed me by
Years I will never again get back.
All gone with the wind.

So no, don’t tell me about the destiny of patient love
I have no want or tolerance for it.
I believe in the here, now
This moment, this second.
So I will kiss you with wild abandon.
And run away with you on those high and turbulent seas
And I will believe you today when you tell me
That I am your fate
That you will love me always
I will believe you today, right here and now
In this moment, this second
While we’re here
While we can.

Tomorrow; any fated love of the future can sort itself out then.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

I watched “The age of innocence” today.

I’m still not sure how i feel about it. Maybe it’s because I see life through the lessons of my own life.. but I don’t believe in that “if it’s meant to be” nonsense.

On the plus side it inspired a few pieces. Watch this space.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

0429/031020

You know when you know there are words you need to write? You can feel them rolling around inside your head. But then you pick up a pen or turn on the screen and - poof - you can’t find them again. And as long as you don’t put them down, you won’t be able to make heads or tails of it.

This is me right now.

I’ll return when I’ve sorted it out.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

I know what you want from me

but I can not give you what you want

I can not promise you forever

You see there are two women in me and

right now I don’t know which one loves you.

One woman falls in love hard, fast and wild
She is a hopeless romantic and she is fickle

She is highly capricious and eccentric
She could fall out of love with you tomorrow

just as quickly as she fell in love with you today
And she will leave.
Do not doubt that for a second.
She was born with the heart of a gypsy
and changes with the phases of the moon.
That is who she is.

And if you truly loved her,

you would let her go when the time came.

Because you would understand that living any other way

would only extinguish her flame and spirit.

You will come to resent her for being who she is.

And she will let you because even out of love, she loves.

Again, that is who she is.

The other woman will resist love to her last
She falls in love slowly and with great reluctance
Love will have to sneak up on her

because she will run a mile if she saw it coming,
She is not particularly romantic

but if she loves you today,
She will love you forever.
Her heart will bind itself to you through any and all situations
Even when you leave her alone.
She is steadfast, patient and loyal

So she will stay, like the stars always remain

even when you can not see them during the day.

Her love for you will bind her completely

Irrespective of her own wishes.

She will lose herself in being with you

You will repay her devotion with disdain

And she will bleed constantly from your carelessness.

So you see, I can not promise you forever.

Because either the first woman loves you

And you will hate her tomorrow.

Or the second woman loves you

And you will ruin her in time.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

Writing about the 1000 things that makes you happy is easy.

Writing about that one bad day in a month builds resistance

And then you start to panic, trying to keep it under wraps

And the more you hide it, the stronger it gets

The more you fight it, the stronger it gets,

And the stronger it gets, the more it agitates you.

And isolates you.

It’s emotional blackmail.

But

You write about it and put it out there before it can grow

And you take away its power.

You wake up the next day,

lighter than you would have if you still carried the weight of that burden.

Some burdens though you can’t completely shrug off like that.

Those are burdens of circumstance.

Like the loss of a loved one, lost job or debt.

But part of the process remains the same -

Take away its power.

Find home in acceptance.

Find peace within yourself

It will ground and centre you

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

I write about my pain because it is relief.

Simple.

But also.

I write about my hard times because

of that 19 year old in my DM

who says she wants to be like me when she grows up.

While I am flattered I cannot help but worry for her.

Because I’ve had to live through some really painful moments

And sometimes, I relive them again in waking dreams just for kicks.

She is so young and untouched

I hope she doesn’t just see my art and garden and think me a perfect model.

I hope she sees all sides

I hope she knows that there are rough days

I hope she knows that days could be months

And months could be years.

I hope she believes that she will survive.

I hope she survives.

I don’t know what her trials will be.

So I want her to know so she is prepared

And not rudely awakened.

I hope she learns how to handle hard emotions

I hope she knows that it’s okay to have hard emotions

I hope she finds her outlet.

I hope she finds her light

I hope learns how to keep her light

I hope she learns to share that light.

Dear 19, this is for you.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

They left me in the night and thought that they could scare me with the moon.

They didn't know that the moon and i were one and the same.

I walked into the day and saw the sun for the first time

It blinded me, but it gave me warmth

So i stayed a while.

Juicy Raindrops! ♡

Juicy Raindrops

Recipe for a “beautiful” piece

Beneath the cover of night..

You made a liar of me...

Kogane no joō

JM conversations

O deluded one!

Alas a hurricane cometh

Late night confession

Reflections: Happy Anniversary

Reflections: Jewels in my treasure box

The day it began: The Vessel.

Dawn

black noodles

While we are here

0429/031020

My head is a jumble

The Two Women ~ MJ

Where the power lies

Dear 19

Night to Day.

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