Jelly Beans

With jellybeans, there are sometimes too many colors and too many combinations.
But without jellybeans, it is sometimes hard to smile.

Taste bursts from Jeju

A while back, I received a tangerine from Jeju Island.  It was in my fridge for a few days, and the other day, I decided to eat it, thinking it would taste like an ordinary tangerine.  I don't know why I am prompted to write about how sweet and juicy this tangerine was, but it left its taste imprint in my mouth the whole day.  I walked outside to find that the winter clouds had disappeared and there was sunlight everywhere.  So many coincidences that give us signs and symbols.  In any case, I guess, in the end, while I ate this tangerine, I thought to myself, if I had another tangerine, I would give it to someone else to try.

(Excerpt from Yann Martel's "Beatrice and Virgil")
VIRGIL: The taste of a good pear is such that when you eat one, when your teeth sink into the bliss of one, it becomes a wholly engrossing activity. You want to do nothing else but eat your pear. You would rather sit than stand.  You would rather be alone than in company.  You would rather have silence than music.  All your senses but taste fall inactive.  You see nothing, you hear nothing, you feel nothing---or only as it helps you to appreciate the divine taste of your pear.

BEATRICE: But what does it actually taste like?

VIRGIL: A pear tastes like, it tastes like... (He struggles.  He gives up with a shrug.)  I don't know.  I can't put it into words.  A pear tastes like itself.

BEATRICE: (sadly)  I wish you had a pear.

VIRGIL: And if I had one, I would give it to you.

(Silence.)

Oh help me find that cerulean blue..

In the midst this electric shock inducing cold, I pine for the blues to wipe away the winter blues.

Look around, see the cityscapes; nullifies the amazing grace....

I seek to find, but I cannot obey---me or the world what I wanted to say..

Oh help me find that cerulean blue---Oh look to find that cerulean blue...

sigh...

Fourth Dimensional Poker

BAM! or BOOM! or whatever sound comes to mind...
After the stars come crashing, and all is silent.
And then all the lights in the apartments open up their secret spaces.
Something that makes one remember that this is all one anthill and you just happen to be one little ante in your own game of poker.  I think, at these moments, life becomes excruciatingly trapped in the fourth dimension.

The Truth

Your own feelings aside....you should never have to be afraid of asking the one you love if he/she loves you back. For some, it starts and ends with the rain. And for others, it is a universe that always existed.  That may be how it is.  So, do not fear.
(...We all say to ourselves)

A dream in a dream in a dream in a dream...

In a dream, or in a landscape, I look out the windows and it is raining outside. The trees outside are aquamarine and shivering or are they shimmering? The raindrops glide down the glass and inside each is yet another landscape and am I looking out the windows there? And the trees are shimmering or were they shivering?

* PS. In a dream, we would dream of a dream, and in that dream, we would continue to dream. How wonderfully human is that? *

An artist's solitude; A musician's ...

When I was a little girl, my mother used to drop me off at the San Jose Museum of Art for art classes.  I don't remember what time of day it was, or exactly how old I was, but it was always cold and dark in the cathedral-like rooms (why are museums and churches sometimes so similar??).  I'm sure there were other people in the class and teachers with their weird perfumed/paint smells, but for the life of me, I only remember being there alone---as if the finger-paint miraculously appeared on my fingertips, the conte crayon smudges just my sweat stains, the bumpy watercolor paper in rolls like butcher paper, yadda yadda.  Ever since then, I suppose art has always been connected to inherent solitude--at least, the act of making it.  This includes the intentions and all the factors that go into why we do the things we do when we make art or music, etc.

Anyhow, for all this babble, which came from an idea that was organically swelling in my head, and which I tried to summarize in a paragraph, and which now I will just conclude with an overly simplistic statement that will probably have no apparent meaning to me tomorrow morning (afternoon, hehe)  when I wake up and forget where this train of thought had led me, it seems to me, at 4am in Seoul, on a September day, that musicians are lonely and artists are alone.