Layouts and thingsss

Searching for a new layout - this current brown sludgy crap is doing my eyes in....

Ms Charmaine asked me about World Book contributions the other day -

PSYCHED PSYCHED PSYCHED.

Current music:

The Fear - Lily Allen listen to the lyrics especially

Rich Girls - The Virgins

Valerie - The Zutons

Do The Whirlwind - Architecture in Helsinki fun beat

Stay - Sugarland her voice is amazing

Smack My Derb - Alpha Twins Melb shuffle track, totally infectious beat

Beautiful Day - U2 classic.

Glass

do not look through me

I am Flesh and I am Blood

bundle of pulsing veins, beating heart

throbbing muscles.

do not close your ears to me

I am Whole

I am Real

full of thought, bursting with emotion

overflowing with passion.

I exude Life - if I do Exist indeed

I am Tangible and I Breathe

the air that you breathe

I feel the heat of the sun on my skin

sinking into my bloodstream

and firing my core

I Feel, and I Love,

And I admit that I Hate.

yet the gaze of others runs straight through me

uninterrupted as if through glass

eyes looking not  seeing

but I am Flesh

and I am Blood

and I demand that I am Seen.

 

Nora.

I wrote this a week or so ago. Here's the first bit of it.

My great-aunt and my grandfather did actually have to live up in the caves in Pangasinan at the time of the American-Japanese war in the Philippines.

----------------------------

Nora remembers. She remembers the horrible sucking sounds of the mud as they ran, the whine of Japanese planes at their backs. They ran over the fields, up the hills, into the cages. Far, far away from the sound of approaching Death. But in the silence of the cave, cradled in her mother's arms, she still heard the insistent noise of the plane, Nora remembers, she remembers it all.

The children play at Nora's feet, on a hardwood floor, with shiny plastic toys. No stone floors. Nora told her husband, no stone. It reminded her too much of the caves they slept in, of the absolute darkness of every night.

Her grand-nieces and grand-nephews are so soft, skin pink and pliable. At their age Nora's hands were covered with callouses, her heels were dirty and hard. She looks at herself now, hands dotted with liver spots, skin wrinkled with age. The callouses are gone and her skin is clean. No marks remain from the war, except the small shrapnel scar behind her left ear. Nobody knows of it except her elder brother - her perfectly coiffed hair hides her scar expertly.

And where is Alex now?

Grandpa! Grandpa!

The elated cries of her grand-nephew. Ah, here is Alex, the proud grandfather of seventeen, smiling at his grandchildren. The little ones throw themselves at him, Alex Jr. is hanging off his shoulder. Nora sees her brother wince with pain, but the children don't notice how his face is twisted, the veins in his neck bulging. The expression on his face is so familiar to her; the soundless agony of his pain. After all these years, the scar still hurt him.