Unscrew the Stars

Baby, I want you to roll me, hold me in your love
No more habits, promises and jive

I'm in an oldies mood today. But then again, when am I not in an oldies mood, right? Well, strictly speaking, I'm in an awesome eighties mood. I was just listening to Heart's Love Alive. Such a beautiful song, both the music and the lyrics. If every song in the entire world were even half as well-written as this one, the subsequent surge of awesomeness would probably result in World Peace. Fo' shizzle.

I mean, wow. Just wow. Can you dig it, dear reader? Can you feel the way the sound of the guitar just flows over you? And her voice, absolutely perfect. I love the way the drums pick up about halfway through, with that awesome twangy, strummy guitar joining in. Now that is music, people. I could listen to this all day and not get tired of it.

I think if you manage to discover something new in a song or a piece of music every time you listen to it, then that's good music. Deep, you know. With layers and substance and wit.

Oh, and in totally unrelated news: I like stars. You know how certain objects or animals or whatever mean different things to different people? Stars are like that, they're special to me. Okay. So you know I'm Christian, right? If you don't, well...now you do. There's this part in the Old Testament where God and Abraham are having a heart-to-heart. It's where the Big Guy makes His famous 'generation promises', as I like to call them.

Genesis 22:17

indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.

As a Christian, I am a 'descendant' of Abraham. So basically, I am part of the 'star' generation. The Star Seed, if you will. Sounds like a clan of kick-ass comic book mutants, or an ancient tribe of superhuman warriors doesn't it?

Okay, not really what I had in mind. Moving on.

Also. Whenever I think of stars, I think of:

I am a lady from Mars,

And I can unscrew the stars.

I can be anything that I see.

I can be anything that I, anything that I see.

          - Ingrid Michaelson, Lady in Spain

Yeah. My head is a pretty haphazard place. Filled to the brim with anecdotes about stars and things of a similar epic nature--no doubt--but riddled with detours and labyrinths and winding pathways leading to Who Knows Where. Also known as The Land of the Endless Synonyms. Vocabulary Valley. Dictionary Dunes. Thesaurus Trail. Oooh, extra points for my snazzy alliteration. Oh, yes, dear reader. I just used the word snazzy in a sentence.

Okay. So that's it from me for today. Til next time, I remain etc, etc...

Optical allusions

Dear reader,



How goes things? Been a while, hasn't it? I've been so busy recently. Assignments and things, you know. I've actually been trying to write a post for a while. I'd log on, intent on composing a mind-numbingly awesome post, but in the end I just end up staring at the screen for a few minutes--at the blinking bar thingy--then give up and move on to something else because my ideas weren't flowing fast enough, and I was too impatient to wait for them.

I love haikus. Yeah, I know. I pride myself on my segues. (I had to Google search that to make sure I spelt it right, heh) I like the imagery of them. They're more than poems, they're pictures painted with words, optical allusions. So I had this project, right. We selected a randomly-generated haiku, choose five keywords, then take pictures according to those keywords in a specific venue. Kind of like defining the place through the haiku.

So anyway, I've been mildly obsessed with them lately. I've been seeing haikus in everything. I'd say or think something, then mentally count the syllables. I've discovered I usually think in statements of 5 syllables, and only very rarely in 7. It's a strange thing.

My favourite random haiku generator is this one. I don't know why, they seem a little less random than the other sites I've been to. For example...

Torrid little tale.

Another jukebox baby.

Rattlesnake rain drops.

Shoe polish lipstick.

Get lynched by the Amish folk.

Dionysus dreams.

Lost America.

Radiating blissful rain.

Low breathtaking soft.

Tattoos are for punks.

No hangover tomorrow.

Deer in the headlights.

See? It's like 17 syllables of pure, unadulterated awesomeness.

I've been so infatuated with them that I've even composed a few myself. Well, partially composed. I saw this one 7-liner in a random haiku, and it got me thinking. This is what I came up with:

Technicolour thoughts.

Steam swelling from her language.

Silent anarchist.

Try and figure that one out, dear reader. Though it's pretty straightforward for a haiku. Oh, I have another one.

Your stars are shooting.

Optical allusions, ink.

Your hearts are bleeding.

That was actually a collaboration. The story behind its creation is pretty interesting. My friend and I were sitting in the cafeteria. It was a hot, sunny, lazy afternoon. I was drawing on myself, on my wrist. Just because, you know, I thought it'd be cool to draw something on my wrist. So I drew some stars, just a mini-constellation type of thing. It looked kind of boring, so I proceeded to smudge the ink, turning my stars into meteors. My friend was doing the same thing; she has a hearts-and-flowers tattoo on her wrist, and she was inking the hearts and smudging them, making it look like they were dripping.

So she turned to me and said, in a manner-of-fact way, "Your stars are shooting."

To which I replied, "Your hearts are bleeding."

We were quiet for a while, until I said, "That could be a haiku. The first and last lines."

And there you have it. The story behind the haiku.

Speaking of optical allusions--and yes, it's supposed to be allusions, not illusions--one of my lecturers advised us to publish our work via our blogs, because it gives us a way of compiling all of our stuff, a portfolio of sorts. He asked us how many of us actually blog regularly, and I kept quiet. I mean, psshh, like I'd actually let my lecturer visit my blog. That particular lecturer, anyway. So I've been thinking, should I make a new one? One devoted solely to my designy/artsy stuff? I have the name figured out already, you see. I want to call it, yup you guessed it, 'Optical Allusions'. What do you think, dear reader? Should I, or shouldn't I?

And with that, I abruptly take my leave. Sorry to blog and run, dear reader, but if you've noticed, it's 3 a.m. as I'm typing this. I should probably squeeze in 4 hours of sleep before I have to get ready for school. See you when I see you, dear reader.




Yours,





Figgy the Haiku Nerd