Beslan Bedlam

I feel so stupid. The Beslan school siege occurred more than a year ago and it barely even registered in my mind till today. I only vaguely recall reading a bit about it in the news last year, but it didn't seem as big a deal as the theatre incident further back.

Then today, I saw a 2-hour programme on Discovery Channel about the Beslan incident, and it totally shocked me. Somehow, reading about the blah-blah numbers who died in blah-blah incidents doesn't register as strongly as seeing them for yourself, even if you're seeing them second-hand.

Images of ordinary, living people being thrown into such abject tragedy can be very powerful, especially when they are children. Watching a small girl casually point out where her friend had been sitting before getting shot is profoundly unnerving. Right about the point where half-naked, filthy, wounded kids were shown being rushed to the hospital in tears, I started to cry. It was difficult to stop myself from bawling while watching the dramatic show-down footage when hostages, kids, gunmen, weeping relatives and dead bodies started to flood the screen in chaotic succession.

This picture of these schoolboy hostages weeping just following their rescue really struck me. It is the enormity of what they were witness to and barely survived, and what will haunt them for the rest of their lives.













There's little to say when faced with violence and political crappiness like this. It reaffirms my belief that humankind is pretty much an awful species. I love my mind inside that oversized brain, but the same grey matter produces such appalling behaviour in this particular species of animal. I think we evolved so far that we're starting to devolve.

Images courtesy of www.beslan-2004.front.ru

Eye see you

I realise there's a type of eyes that really has an effect on me. Hint: it's in the eyelids.

This is my left eye.

The type of eyes that strikes me is of those that have eyelids rather like my own - begin single-eyelided but un-taper to double. The more pronounced the un-tapering, the more striking I find them.

I was reminded of that this evening at a wedding as I saw an old acquaintance that I'd always thought rather cute. (I digress: My friend said an odd thing when I told her so. "But your boyfriend looks nothing like him." To which I replied, "Just because I like pretty wallpaper doesn't mean I want to date it." So yeah, I may be attached but I'm not dead, and eye candy remains purely eye candy. Takes more than a face to fire my engine, kiddos.) Cute guy in question has eyes somewhat like that, as does an ex-colleague of mine. I find eyes like that rather unnerving actually, almost like their gaze is more intense, more soulful, more searching, like they're trying to tell you more than their mouths are saying.

I was once in love with a guy with eyes like that. His eyes would haunt me even long after I'd closed my eyes and he'd gone. Each time he looked at me silently, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being frozen by his gaze and feeling naked before it, almost making me want to break the silence by enquiring aloud, "What are you asking me?"

But that is another story and shall be told another time, if ever.

Hotmail booboos

Hotmail did it again. The 250MB inbox promised by Hotmail has been brewing for the longest time and yet most of us don't have it yet.

Not that I'm complaining, since I don't use it for personal stuff. Junk mail accumulates there too quickly - I gave up my REALLY long term Hotmail email account because I was getting a minimum of 50 junk mail a day...and a lot of it didn't go into the junk mailbox, and when I set junk filters to maximum, my personal emails got filtered there too. When you can't win, screw it and get a new one.

Anyway, to get back, I find myself amused by their declarations once more. The first was the same experience as Kelvin, who penned it here: http://darkholme.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_darkholme_archive.html#112614619590212692. I'd received that email in September which promised the inbox upgrade "by the end of August". Interesting concept of time.

The other was the email received today.












And this is the current size of my inbox (the 2nd email in my inbox with the subject "Your Inbox is Growing!" is the abovementioned email):






C'est le Hotmail.

Echoes of a piano

I hadn't heard the theme from The Piano for a long time. I'd even forgotten to put it under "Favourite Music" in my Friendster profile. It's been an even longer time since I stopped to think about what it used to mean to me, the effect it used to have on me.

I'd loved it from the moment I heard it when I watched the Jane Campion movie, but wasn't a profound part of me yet at the time. It took a lonely piano and the soft voice of the first man-boy I fell in love with.

It wasn't my fingers moving over the keys, nor the rousing music that they conjured. It wasn't the warmth of the afternoon nor the unique smell of someone else's home, the kind that you never find in another. It wasnt the feel of the cool tiles under my left foot nor the brass pedal under my right, nor the little ornaments and photo frames that lined the top of the piano which fleetingly crossed my gaze.

It was the feel of his gaze on my back, the electric awareness of his presence a few feet behind me. His gaze was almost a physical sensation, a gentle warmth on the back of my head, following the length of my hair, flowing over my shoulders and down to the small of my back and the back of my arms.

"The Heart Asks Pleasure First" is its name. Its music was pure, flowing torrents of passion that filled you and lifted you, creating such longing that you felt like your heart would break. And when it was your hands that made such music, you could feel its power through your fingers and your arms as you raced through its depths, its crests and its rip tides.

I played it on the day I found love, on the piano that sat in the house of the man-boy. That night, he whispered that his piano still lay uncovered and that he watched it, remembering the day, remembering my fingers on it.

From then, whenever I heard it, I thought of him and his voice. Whenever I heard his voice or was with him, I heard it in my head. Memories of lying next to him watching him sleep, the music playing softly on the hi-fi, washing over me in those moments of timeless perfection.

That love is long gone, so completely that it no longer so much as tugs when I think about it. When the music plays, it is not the man-boy that I remember. It is not the strains of a once perfect love that dominated my life so completely and destructively that fills my mind. It is the image of a time gone by, of a part of me that lives but has metamorphosised, of the power of the music that holds sway over my mind and my soul as I let myself drown in its depths and mourn as its last notes trail to its end.

Who lights up who?

I'm suddenly reminded a single, radiant moment when happiness ruled true and pure, even for a moment. It wasn't some dramatic event. It wasn't even like I'd won any lotteries, gotten any presents, received any compliments or had any wishes fulfilled.

It was a smile. Or rather, two smiles.

I no longer remember what Kelvin was saying that made me break into a smile. I didn't think that it was anything extraordinary until I saw the look of pure delight that suddenly lit up his face in reaction to my mirth. He looked as if he was so utterly charmed by the way my smile had dawned on my face. His own face was radiating with untainted joy, the type that requires no rhyme nor reason, nor requires any conscious thought. As I looked at him, I felt his smile light up my heart and complete my own smile. We sat there in that moment of circular joy, delighting in each other, enjoying the voiceless, senseless happiness that flowed between us.

All this in a strange, unforgettable, inexplicable moment.