Searching For Peace

Something my best friend at work sent me today, apparently often misattributed to Maya Angelou but actually written by Pamela Redmond Satran. Poor Pamela, because she should get credit for making some sense.

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
enough
money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own,
even if she never wants to or needs to...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
something perfect to wear
if the employer, or date of her dreams
wants to see her in an hour...

A WOMAN SHOULD
HAVE ..
a youth she's content to leave behind....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .
a past
juicy enough that she's looking forward
to retelling it in her old age....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and...
a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..
one friend who always makes her laugh..
and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..
a good piece of furniture
not previously owned by anyone else in her family...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal,
that will make her guests feel honored....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
a feeling of control
over her destiny..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD
KNOW..
how to fall in love
without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW..
how to quit a job,
break up with a lover,
and confront a friend,
without ruining the friendship..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder...
and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...
but it's over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do...
for love or more...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone...
even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY
WOMAN SHOULD KNOW.. .
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't take it personally...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go....
be it to her best friend's kitchen table..
or a charming Inn in the woods....
when her soul needs soothing...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW.
What she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month... and a year...

Reading it, I don't think I have nearly everything I should, but I'm still learning and at least now, I have a checklist and I'm working on it, starting with the black lace bra.

Too Soon

In what effectively feels like one of the worst days in a while (I feel more trapped, tired, stressed and mad than ever), I can always find time for laughter.

A good friend and I agree that as long as we can find humour in something, there's still reason to live. The day I find myself unable to crack a joke even in the most dire circumstances, you'll probably find me with a bullet through my brain in a ditch somewhere (I know Singapore's full of high rise but I'm scared of heights, aight?!).

Dee, on leave today, was attending a wedding dinner at the zoo and informed me that they'd each received a stuffed toy lion as wedding favours.

I texted back: Omg so cute! Next time I also married at zoo with lucky draw. Winner gets thrown to white tigers.

To which my ever-astute compadre shot back: Haha but not before you give the winner a broom and pail.

Hahahaha!

People say that pressmen are hard-hearted, soulless and care for nothing more than spectacle.

This is untrue.

We're often laughing at the sidelines of funerals and joking about tragedies that occur, almost as soon as they wend their way out of the police department. But as Mugi once remarked: "You have to laugh, or you just can't do it at all." This, from a tough, grown man moved to tears at the sight of a grotty place under a bridge where a two year old girl's body was once stuffed to rot.

It's a wise maxim I use in every aspect of my life. It's what keeps me sane and afterward, I find I can still breathe and move and find joy in everything else. All I ask is that now and then, you take the trouble to look beyond the smile and care about what I want.

Truer Words

"There's 13 year old kids still today, hanging themselves, because the reach to identity is still too far. Because they're homosexual or whatever the issue is. ... Whatever it is, we can't give up a word to save that kid's life? It's a national shame."

Sean Penn on minority rights, or the lack thereof in America.

Best Friends

B: "Today, I love you more than you love yourself."

I gotta tell you babe, sometimes it really feels like you guys are the only ones that do.

Because I'm Too Tired To Finish My Sentences

Who knew
when I said "here is the deepest secret nobody knows"
you would take it literally
and I didn't understand the tribute was
a eulogy,
essentially:
a tunnel of devourment
with no clear ending light?

The silent shade of a cave
More than the collective gasp
of twenty in a room -
who would want me, anyway?

Insanity pooled in scummy prisms,
dark corners of a mind
balled tight
Fists cocked but never swinging,
rusted softly into place.

They peeled the film off my brain,
but the cheshire cat smile still remains,
And the madness steams from my scalp like air.

Squint a little, lad, and you'll see,
a hollow where my guts should be,
Don't you know anyhow?

I'm just not all there.

Broken

I wake up in the new year, expecting the world to be a bombed out shell, a shadow of its former self.

To my surprise, everything in the world is living and blooming as it always was. I'm the one that feels dead inside.