The passing of MJ was for me like saying goodbye to an era of my childhood; his music streamed in and out of my child's life without even my awareness. He had always been around as long as I could remember, and I felt a strange emotion yesterday, disturbed, as if some portion of my distant past had been dislodged from its slumber and then folded back to rest, gently closed. And then I realized how some people and things, although not a part of our daily conscious life, are still what we like to have around, existing somewhere, out there. He had always been around as I can remember, our existences parallel, but now no more.

For all of life's struggles, we have or will all pay our dues. At life's closing, let us allow those who have passed to go in peace and with best wishes.

Songs are like discrete capsules of time, locking in the smells, sights, and sounds of little pockets of time and our lives, and for that, I am ever grateful. It's funny how the songs of my parents generation have also become the songs of my childhood, by default. I remember trying to zone out my father's music as he blasted them at home; it seemed the whole house would pound with his loud beats. I remember sifting through piles of dusty CD cases and playing them when he was at work, skipping the tracks until I found a jewel or two of a song I liked. I remember lying in the back seat of the car listening by default to what I snubbed as old-fashioned music. But yet now I can sing along to their oldies and appreciate -- even seek, them in a moment of nostalgia; sometimes an old song is what I need to remember, and always will be. It is comforting in a chicken-soup-when-i-am-sick way that no modern song can ever provide, for once again I am mommy and daddy's little girl clutching my Piggy doll, and they are both, infinitely capable.

picture credit: deviantart.net

On Sensitivity
I am highly impressionable. Metaphorically it's like if a thumbprint could be left on the skin of my soul just by a single touch, that would describe how I am. I am sensitive to slight cues and invisible nuances, to the constant buzz of intricate emotions that surround every human being and his web-like relations to others. I believe in sympathy and that if we cannot get across to someone, we are merely pressing on the wrong spot. We are not two-dimensional; we are all prisms that reflect light in different directions and have shadows cast upon different sides at any given time. If we don't see the darkness but only the light, we are not looking close enough; if we don't see the light but only the darkness, we are looking the wrong way. I like to believe in the fundamental goodness of every person, but also of the basic ease that this goodness can turn sour. All good things spoil without constant care, yes even as our faces grow lines and we slather creams on them, so our souls age with time and too much weariness. We must guard against entropy in all areas of our lives, yes, we must fiercely guard or we will fall apart to the destructive pullings of the universe and of each other.