ME

i am called
layla
it means night,
it means persian princess
and it means eric clapton's music.

i am 24

i am too old for lollipops
or for peter pan
and flat ballet shoes.

yet i look too young
to understand
r-rated movies,
insomnia, contraceptives,
dirty politics, hollywood deaths,
and heartbreak.

i am
the right size for bathtubs,
stilettos,
and red satin.

but i don't have
the right posture
for the runway,
for the military,
and for independence.

i shift
from frailty to confrontational,
from recklessness to yearning,
from guilt to defense.

i like
to believe in justice
to find strawberries in mountains,
to wake up from an embrace,
to discover the cure for abandonment,
and to recall being alive.

i was told
my smile is infectious,
my hands are restless,
my mind wanders
and my heart is cold.

but i may not always smile
to allow a tear or two
and i may not always want
to wear stilettos.

but i will always like
the story of the persian princess,
the feel of satin,
the promise of neverland,
and the therapeutic comfort of an embrace.

foolish games

[apologies to jewel kilcher for using the title of one of her songs in this entry]


writing while dishwalla ponders where somewhere in the middle is



i badly need the old-fashioned hugs where i could melt into.

what is it about games that deceive men as fantasy land equivalents while i woefully regard it as the "road to break-up land?" what is so addictive about 3D characters that don't provide any real interactions with you? how did it ever become better than curling up with a book?

i am sorry if i am speaking in absolutes, but i can't help but wonder why i always end up with men whose brains shut down in the face of online games. i acknowledge that psp's and pc games are continuously created for the same reasons we have bad germs and bad bacteria in our bodies -- a little dose is essential. what i cannot grasp is why they cannot live without it; they are enslaved by keys and arrows and the "are you sure you want to quit?" message/threat for consecutive days -- even weeks!

and most trivial of all how do these men, who had the audacity once or twice to say that they are smarter than i am (which i even poorly believed to be true) waste their self-declared "intelligence", their "wisdom" into unproductivity? these men, who i silently admire for being able to last all day with only a book and a coffee, now lose their charm as they rot in mental self-decay. i am no longer offered old-fashioned hugs, all we share now are scornful nights as we take our separate and individual turns in sleeping on a cold bed.

the 9 movies i watched (some, i watched again) on a 5-day stint

ANNOUNCEMENT: i am now proudly, a part of the training department. and with my much-deserved promotion comes a much-deserved vacation leave, which i utilized by watching the following:

1. my blueberry nights
2. the oxford murders
3. persepolis
4. be kind rewind
5. cassandra's dream
6. manderlay
7. run lola run
8. dogville
9. burn after reading