The Green Folk

Turn on the jukebox by a movement of the hips, "Imitation of Life" by American band R.E.M. starts to play. I am transported to what could be a field of sorts, a plot of land in which jack o’ lanterns shine their humorously spooky glimmer,  somewhere I've never been to before, where U.F.O.’s roam the night skies with technological ease and Coca-Cola is the cultural wine. A place that I surely have seen in the innumerable movies that the star spangled nation of classified violence and planned coups on foreign soil threatened by “red influence” has churned out for us, third world dwellers to enjoy, to envision a better life, a life that no one can truly ever achieve, for this illusion goes both ways. 

This is a land of visual signifiers, where the natural is but a hoax, a place of play pretend. Let's pretend I wasn't raised by the internet, let's play as if I didn't feel completely disconnected from my motherland, let's imitate those on the screen and absorb all things unreal, let's become a beacon of references and behaviors, let's astral project to a filmic realm of heavy-handed, candy colored propaganda. Let’s become one with pop culture’s paraphernalia. Let's adopt a new tongue and become so fluent and skilled in it that you are forever banned from having smooth conversations with those who surround you, for the time that you've spent honing your craft in foreign sounds and ways to construct sentences has changed the chemistry of your brain beyond any repair. Let's isolate and ignore, for there are better things to see and believe in, just live off the worldly grid, find solace online. Let's go as far as isolating ourselves from the internet streets that are bustling with life and activity, for people are a disease and we want all things beautiful and tailored to our own specific interests. Let's create an echo chamber devoid of any political discussion, let's ignore it all, let our sustenance rely solely upon images and pretty things, let’s take our minds off of imminent annihilation. 

Aliens have landed on my mother soil, a long time ago. The green folk, they have a taste for hindering progress, but how can we blame them? They’re far more experienced, they’re good and considerate, they bring us glossy trinkets, they let us have a peek at their refined, evolved ways, they teach us how to be better, they’ve civilized us. Just like the ones that were responsible for the Giza pyramid and 9/11 in the minds of conspiracists who don tinfoil hats, these aliens have stained this country in a way that all that can ever shimmer is foreign. Long live the green folk and their paternalistic approach to tearing cultures apart!

I have been visited by aliens, I wear the costumes they’ve brought me, I’ve adopted their peculiar sayings, I even have become a connoisseur of their fine arts. Thanks to their much needed intervention, my gummy brain now floating in a crystalline capsule for them to probe with, I can see the world through green-colored glasses.

The Revamp of Frost, Good Old Friend of Mine

Frost as a noun: “a deposit of small white ice crystals formed on the ground or other surfaces when the temperature falls below freezing”

Frost as a verb: “become covered with small ice crystals”

Frost as state of mind, state of things: It encapsulates what the mind goes through when the changes of seasons, accelerated as they are nowadays, take a more introspective turn. When the days tie their daily endings with ribbons made of early sunsets, when every sigh billows out of your mouth in hazy clouds, when the sun crooks itself in a peculiar way, when things aren’t garish, when sunlight is pale, when thoughts can flow without any climatic constraints, for a good imagination can only degenerate into absolute nonsense when the heat melts down your brain.

Frost serves a higher written purpose, it makes words scintillate, it allows the mind to glide freely across innumerable magical prompts, its embrace stretching out to keep you and all the things you love and hold dear separated from the rest of the rumbling, garish masses, its embrace takes the shape of a sphere, keeping you warm inside, keeping you inside a snow globe filled with dreams, shiny things, ideas to explore, introspection to take hold.

Two years ago, frost served as a worthy friend, a way to keep myself entertained and the gears of my mind grinding on the daily, it allowed me to write and read and bask in the jeweled glory of the great pieces I came across. Back then, frost was a way for me to ignore all that went on, outside of my mind palace, in the “here and now” of those days. I really wanted a way out, a definitive one, and for a short while, I had one. The problem was, I wrote my way out of the bad, the ugly, the real, and soon enough, I was unable to make sense of what was going on. Isolated, I started planning a way out of my then reality, I would think of myself as a technicolor mass to mold, I mentally turned into nothing, paid attention only to what was interesting, and crafted a new identity to take on. The problem was, said identity and the plans, ideas, and convictions it came with were completely out of touch, in an abhorrent way, it went against common sense, it was feeding off of delusions and it put a halt on my could-be progress. It stopped making sense, although it never made any to begin with, and suddenly I was faced with the ugly truth; For all my plans and grandiose ideas, all the ways I would allegedly start behaving in, I was sitting on the benches of my own life. Making no progress, doing nothing to change my circumstances, dreaming away the days until I had to mend the damage done by my autopilot slumber.

What I’m getting at is, frost can be morphed into something better, it doesn’t have to be an agent of mental chaos and disordered ways. After those few months of planning my escape came to a close, mainly because I got interested in chasing after a possible love, and such interest turning into reality, coloring my days with the “here and now”, I realized how horribly dumb my plan actually was.

Two years later, and my path has gotten a lot clearer, I have experienced love, its warm routines, and seen the beauty in the mundane, but I also have gotten a little too sidetracked. Let me explain. After realizing how stupid I was, monkey clapping cymbals in my brain, I got way too invested in accepting everything real, as it is, right now, no romance or glitter weaved between the fabrics of objective existence. I started looking down on writing and reading and finding pleasure in beautiful things. I started to think that in doing that, I would once again become pretentious and stupid, out of touch. But, with the revamp of frost for this upcoming chilly season, I am accepting everything, both the ins and outs of living, I am coming to terms with how things are, as well as realizing that at the end of the day, writing and imagining is a part of me, it always has been and it always will be. You can live a centered life while also basking in the colored rays that reflect off of art’s jewels. I can make time for the everyday living, and the little detours I take in my mind.

Frost, good old friend of mine, the concept that has crystallized around your linguistic roots is glossy and ever-changing, and for that, I shall always appreciate the hermetic state of mind you provide.

Candy Jewels, A Return To Form

"My palace in which all was a fact, it hasn’t crumbled, it hasn’t dimmed, my plan has been left untouched." Back then I did have a plan, sort of. I was highly delusional, bored, and isolated, a combination that can only bring disappointment and a forced expansion of the mind once it all comes crashing down. 

Modes of being, something to keep track of. I’ve rearranged the visual innards of my mind multiple times by now, all to accommodate the waves of feeling that crash against imaginative, visual shores. This time around there are no delusions of grandeur, no jeweled conjectures to get me through uneventful days, all that there’s left of my past written ways is a desire to bridge the gap between what I see, as it is, and what I feel, what is perceived. 

There’s a lot that has happened since I got serious about periodically letting thoughts flow into screen, back then I thought it would take me to a mythical place in which my importance was a given, I wanted a way out, a carefully thought-out plan, and so I was transfixed with the possibility of being someone. Nowadays, all I want to do is keep myself busy, enjoy and adore all that I can, for there is love in this life of mine, and I am no longer a ribboned beast, a real person is what I am now. Perhaps there is not much sense to be made, for there is no audience in mind, or maybe what my writing suffers from the most is the clear lack of factual material, but I believe that context can only taint an otherwise wholesome activity, and so, I will continue to do as I please, for the only thing that serves as worthy fuel to this is my wish to keep doing what comes naturally, to imagine myself elsewhere, to put pen to cream-colored paper, fingers to backlit keyboard, it is all about being, one way or another.  

I shall write myself out of gnarly frames of mind, into a land of spotless circumstances, a better starting point, a place in which there is no harm to be made, no danger, no ghouls to torment my otherwise tranquil existence, a place in which I am surrounded by all the things I adore, where my only companion is the one I love, a place in which all that I want in this life of mine materializes itself into existence, a place in which worries vaporize into glittering dust, turning into a memory of a far-away annoyance. 

This is my territory, my land of the in-between, where the sun is never cruel, the cold never unforgiving, a place in which all is nice, where the moon comes out of hiding as soon as the late evening starts to settle in, a place in which I sit and watch the trees sway in their sunset dance, honey-dipped light bathing rich foliage, a weather tender as a loving hug, a place pristine and out of reach to the outside world, my haven of lilac skies and soft embraces.