They’ll hunt you for skin; They’ll kill you for blubber
Tonight, I sat next to a banana at a bus stop.
Curved and yellow, it sat there unblinking. Contemplating the future, (I can only guess).
As it laid next to me unstripped and perishable,
I found myself thinking about all the unseen fears that we, as a species, have created for our fruit + vegetable kingdoms.
The banana, amongst them.
That beneath it’s unpeeled skin laid the untold mysteries about the true nature of yellow things, the soft sweet illusions of unbridled white flesh, and the whole entire exhaustive range of sexually-charged (and lustful) associations;
And surely, that other thing which comes to the wandering mind – the origin Tree of the boomerang fruit.
Are there any straight bananas out there tonight? (I wonder).
Sitting alone on isolated park benches and old, abandoned bus stops.
Ones who bend against the rules, the structural conditions of a reality-that-is-not-possible.
Ones who contemplate the world with all its oddities, and peel a little back to expose their life scent of interrupting fantasies and chance, accidental encounters.
The revolutionary bananas, the bananas with fortitude and strong character and a sense of self.
The straights.
Perhaps.
But my bus arrives.
And time drifts back to normalcy, and I shake my head.
Bananas are bent. We all know that.
I flag the bus down, take out my EZ link pass,
And I wave a quiet goodbye to my banana companion, (who’s waiting for the midnight express).
Kid Cudi
The hip hop community has been experiencing a revival of sorts, now that the likes of T-Pain and Lil Wayne have gone past their Auto-Tune sell-by dates (mostly because AT has a disillusionary effect when it comes to live performances). Here at theplanktonsociety, we’re not surprised that the big H to the O-V, and protégé + Taylor-Swift-baddie Kanye are at the helm of a more progressive, hard-hitting back beat than the earlier 808s which had reigned for most of the late 1990s/ early 2000s. We were pleasantly delighted with Jay’s latest, to say the least.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’re really keeping an eye out for Kid Cudi, whose managed to impress us with his line of collaborative works and overall lyrical aptitude. Where Ne-Yo’s “Year of the Gentleman” album teased us with the possibility of this new undercurrent (of interstellar dance hooks and whatnot), and Santigold’s “L.E.S. Artistes” single flirted with the concept of a latent hip hop electronica avant-garde awaiting to wash ashore that sandy beach of Music Awesomeness, Kid Cudi has smashed our eardrums and blown us to bits with this live performance of “Pursuit Of Happiness” on Letterman’s show. It doesn’t hurt that Ratatat’s around to help as well.
And yes.
Letterman’s holding the psychedelic art-inspired album upside down at the end.
She’ll Hurt You and You’ll Cry in Silence
The lady on the crowded SBS bus
Who’s standing beside me
(I’m seated)
She’s going home to cook dinner
And in her red plastic bag is a bag full of rice
At the next stop the man behind me leaves
And she hurries to occupy the empty seat
(The red plastic bag is heavy for her)
She rushes and doesn’t notice
When the rice bag smacks into my face
And hits me hard
Oh man that’s hurt and pain
Right there man.
Beware of food staples.
They should put a warning sign on those things.
Meet the Cosmos
The cosmopolitan couple’s wedding was held on an international cruise ship bound for Alaska. He, of Norwegian-Dutch-Portuguese-Burmese descent; she, of Japanese-British-Hawaiian-Aboriginal blood. They’d met at Heathrow’s Aisle 1, where a mix up of lost luggage had caused a brief momentary instance of standard apologizing, complete with polite bowing and shaking of smiling heads, as well as an exchanging of phone numbers.
On their first date at a sushi bar, she’d impressed him with her Kagoshima-accented ordering of Japanese food; he’d impressed her with his burgonde ordering of French wine. Together they shared a love for fusion art, a fascination with multilingual street signage, and an endearing passion for transnational humanitarian organizations.
They begun taking salsa lessons on Thursday evenings, and watched reruns of “Mind Your Language” over the weekends. Before they knew it, three years had gone by. On a sunset beach, he, finally proposed to her by asking for her hand in several languages; and she, simply answered in one: Hai, mochiron*.
* “Yes, of course.”
Quickly! The people are waiting for your (slightly) more interesting life!
That ever-playing silly symphonic score of my life has drifted into a wayward Tristan chord progression of W O R K over the past two weeks. Remember when I said that I’d be rushing around with map layouts and talking in mathematical figures a few entries back?
Whelp.
I’m doing that now.
Every. Single. Day.
It doesn’t help that the standard office environment is generally sterile in terms of speech parameters.
I haven’t said a bad word for the longest time.
The upside to the whole deal is that my creative levels are inversely related to my shacked-ness.
So.
I’ve handwritten a bunch of stories that I’m hoping to churn out once I actually do have the time, and I’ve planned out a few collaborative design projects to get off the ground in the coming months.
10 weeks into the job! I shall knit a shooting star and surf to the condo rooftop of the universe and declare myself “wonderfully ambulant”! (after I get my sleep back, that is)
Stuff I miss doing
ever since I started working:
1. Cooking pasta
2. Reading + Writing
3. The utter casual randomness of an unplanned day
helter-skelter happy Beatles image: because I’m feeling nostalgic
Just because there’s a mole to whack, doesn’t mean can anyhow whack
“Nowhere does it say that the blacks would be differently treated.”
Clearly, someone wasn’t informed about the three-fifths compromise.
Oopsy.
P.S.: I had a choice between “Oopsy” or “OooooooooOooooooorhhhhh”.
Personally, I felt that the former was more polite. and somewhat cuter. Hence.
They all talk in present tense
Ah. Rhythms.
in life.
I shall do a dance, and you can hum a tune.
We is always Changing
Tomorrow On Friday, I’ll wave goodbye to one of my dearest friends. And I won’t know when we’ll meet again, exactly.
for dessert, for drinks, for scrabble.
Life’s too short for Melancholy, but occasionally it does take a seat on your front yard, and then there’s no use turning on the sprinklers for it (because mostly, Melancholy loves moping in the wet).
Ah. But where will we be without the people who’ve travelled our ways? Probably, not a great distance (I think). And perhaps, a little lost, as well.
So here’s to the great journey ahead, my dearest Miss marycherry. And may our paths collide as much and as often as they have. I’m sure we’ll find each other again someday. After all, the galaxy is only so small.
And we.
This forever friendship of ours.
So much bigger.
