To Gilbert

November 16th, 3:12pm. This was the day and time he first came into my life. Gilbert was tiny and you could tell he was a baby lizard*. So young… so full of life.

I got excited when I first saw him, as I live high up a building and couldn’t believe he had made it up this far.

I opened up the balcony doors and let him in. Oh the times we had together!

Gilbert explored my home for 23 days**. I’d randomly see him in the living room just roaming around. Then my room and finally the shower.

I had seen him there before and he was fine, I just remember seeing him like oh Gilbert! How’d you get in here? and let him be. I left the shower door open just in case he wanted to roam around some more.

I remember talking to my friend Alina about him. Making jokes about how I had just gotten a new pet, Gilbert. She had told me I should let him outside, but I didn’t listen.

Then on a cold morning of 12/9/20, I went to take a shower.

I had seen him on a corner and tried to make sure water wouldn’t fall on him. But then… as I kept looking over at him I realized he wasn’t moving.

That’s when I knew…He was gone.

I will remember him as the tiny lizard that one sunny day came to bring its light into my world. I’ll never let another in my apartment (and my heart) ever again.

Goodbye Gilbert. Rest well.

Gilbert, the day we met

* I know nothing about lizards so maybe I’m wrong here
** Or maybe less… not sure how long he had been dead.

To Her

He sat down with his guitar. The sun’s rays filtered through the window, bathing him in a golden light. He started playing the song. The song he wrote for her.

Remembering his younger self, running around town with his friends. Playing games.

Every note he played he remembered her, waiting for him at home. Always gentle. Always caring. Always with a smile.

He remembered the time he got caught in the rain coming home from school. The day had been hot and humid and every drop of rain felt amazing.

He knew he would get in trouble. He knew she would be waiting for him so he rushed home.

He arrived home drenched and out of breath. She was waiting for him. Always caring, always gentle. This time there was a frown on her face, not a smile.

She knew him well. She knew he had been caught in the rain and didn’t seek shelter. She tried to hide her knowing smile, remembering her younger self. Remembering she used to do the same as a kid.

She had dry clothes ready, waiting for him. He apologized. She reprimanded him as she helped him change into dry clothes. He was 7 years old then. How the years had gone by…

He kept playing. Reminiscing about his childhood. About her.

He remembered the time he fell down running away from a dog. Neighbors intervened and the dog didn’t get him, but he was all scrapes and bruises getting home. She was there, always caring, always gentle. She had concern on her face, not a smile.

She saw him walk in, dirty and crying. She tended to him, cleaned his injuries, put band-aids on his scrapes. He was going to be OK. He was home with her.

He remembered all the times he had gotten sick. She was there, putting cold towels on his forehead. Checking his temperature. Staying up all night to care for him. Buying him his favorite meal so he would eat.

How the years had gone by. He was grown now. He was a man. He had a job, he had responsibilities. But he was always grateful to life, for her. For all she had done for him. All the sacrifices she had made.

Happy Mother’s Day. To Her. To you. To all the mothers. Always caring, always gentle, always with a smile.

The bananas

It was a sunny Monday morning in a beautiful banana tree forest. A bunch of bananas were waking up and starting their day.  What did their day consist of? Nothing, just hanging.

One of the bananas in the bunch looked grumpy. It had gotten tired of being so close together with its siblings and just hanging off the tree. It day-dreamed of adventure, of exploring the world.

This particular banana had paid attention to all the neighbors. Every so often a bunch of bananas from a neighboring tree would be taken away on a truck by a couple of humans. The banana wished one day it would be its turn.

That day came fast. The very next morning, the humans came back and parked near its tree. The banana got excited and kept telling its siblings it may be their time to leave and explore.

The tree got sad every time it saw the humans approach, but it also understood they were part of the food group for humans and animals alike and that was just what they were meant to do. It would be a wasted life to just hang from the tree and rot before giving away their nutrients.

The humans slowly approached the tree. They were deep in conversation. The banana kept looking over to them and the closer they got the happier and excited the banana became. Its siblings were apprehensive but they were also quietly excited about the prospect of being taken on a new adventure.

Finally, it happened. One of the humans reached over and yanked the bunch from the tree. It was a sharp pain the tree experienced. Each banana just felt a sting as they all shared in the pain.

After being plucked away all bananas were screaming from fear mixed with excitement. They couldn’t believe their lives were finally beginning. All that time daydreaming about the adventures they would have and what they would see after being plucked from the tree. It was all finally happening.

The humans placed the bunch on the bed of the truck and started to drive away. The tree looked on at them with a smile and teary eyes. The bananas looked back and said their goodbyes as they knew this was the last time they would see their mother.

As they moved along the road, the bananas facing up were relating what they were seeing to the unfortunate ones that were facing down. Telling them about the different trees they were passing. There were big trees and small trees and even some flowers they had never seen before.

As the truck went on, they got closer and closer to town. In one of the turns, the banana bunch moved enough that the ones facing down were now facing up and able to see this new world for themselves.

They couldn’t believe all the different variety of humans walking around. They were all wide eyed and happy to be there. They understood their life-span was limited so they were taking in every sight and every moment, enjoying themselves.

Suddenly, the truck stopped in front of a house with red walls. Out came an old lady wearing a white apron. She wiped her hands on the apron and waved hello to the two humans.

One of them went to the back of the truck and grabbed 5 bananas from the bunch to give to the lady. The group felt the sting of their lost brothers but said their quick goodbyes excited about their new adventure.

Talk started among the bunch and they each kept thinking about what kind of human they may go to and what they would see.

The truck visited a few more houses and gave bananas away to a few more humans until only the core was left.

Each group of bananas experienced different things:
Some had a shorter lifespan than the others, as some humans liked to eat their bananas green and would go straight to boiling them for dinner.

Others were able to age a bit more. Although there was always the anxious human that would still eat one or two even if they weren’t fully ripe.

Then there were those humans that would wait until the bananas were ready to eat.

Last but not least, were the forgetful ones. Those are the types of humans the bananas dreamed of ending up with. This allowed the bananas to live longer and have more time to observe humans and life all around them as they aged.

In the end, they each were grateful for their lives. Whether it was short or long. They were grateful to have been a chosen bunch. To have been taken from home on new adventures and to have experienced new things before giving their nutrients to the humans.

Insulin Boy

There once was a boy who lived in a city made out of chocolate. This was a city that was made by really rich people with nothing better to do and who also happened to be chocolate lovers.

To keep the chocolate in solid state they would monitor the temperature to keep it cold enough at all times.

Because of this, this boy was born into eternal winter. Every day it was cold and that’s what he was used.

Although he was born in this chocolate city, he actually didn’t like chocolate but he was afraid to ever tell anyone because this was a chocolate-lovers world. He was kind of tired of it from living there forever, and having it served to him everywhere and walking on it and bathing in it and etc.

In fact, it grossed him out that people would live in a chocolate world, sit in chocolate toilets and still have the stomach to eat the chocolate on a daily basis.

As you can imagine, the diabetes in this world was through the roof. The insulin makers of other cities were loving it. Insulin was like the new commodity. Being sold in markets for a lot of money.

In fact, it was so valuable that this city had an insulin bank. Every child being born into this city would automatically have an account created. It was assumed they’d eventually suffer from diabetes.

However, because this boy didn’t even like chocolate, he was secretly rich, as he never exchanged the insulin or used it.

Every day he’d pretend to eat the chocolate and hide all sorts of veggies inside his room.

He had enough money saved up that he bought land just outside the city and would sneak out every night.

He started growing all sorts of vegetables for his daily meals. He loved doing this so much he also started growing flowers so he now was the proud owner of a beautiful garden.

He would spend time there on the evenings after school, and he was always sad he could never tell his parents or friends about this. As they would shun him and kick him out of chocolate world.

Although he hated chocolate, he could never leave his friends and family since it’s all he ever knew.

As he tucked himself to sleep every night, he’d dreamed of an endless supply of veggies and fresh air.

Ian and the Nachos

Ian woke up at exactly 4am to check on the nachos he had left in the microwave. He totally forgot he had left them in there since he was so exhausted from his travels.

You see, Ian had traveled for the past 10 hours to get to his first destination on a long journey around earth. Or what was left of earth…to explore.

Going back to the nachos, he started inspecting them to make sure they were good to eat. He smelled them and they smelled good still. He touched them and weirdly enough, the tortilla chips were still crunchy to the touch. You see, usually when you put nachos in the microwave for too long the tortilla chips get soggy but for a weird reason not these nachos. These nachos were still as if he had just taken them out of the oven 2 minutes ago.

Before he went to take a bite, he decided to turn on the light. He figured eating in the dark wouldn’t give him the full nacho-eating experience. And so he started with the first bite. When suddenly he heard a scream. A scream that was coming from within and not without. A scream that originated from his throat. It was too high pitched for it to have been his own scream. He also had no reason to scream so it definitely wasn’t him. 

Usually when someone screams they feel the strain in their throat. Ian had felt no strain, Ian had just heard the sound. He was so freaked out by it, he spit out the piece of nacho, which up to that point he had enjoyed very much. 

When he looked at what was left off that bite, he saw what was a very angry jalapeno. Now, jalapenos are known to be fiery creatures with a very spicy attitude and he had made sure to cook his nachos the recommended time to ensure the jalapenos were well cooked but this one had survived. Apparently it had hid inside what looked like a cave of nacho chips where no melted cheese had gotten in to end the job.

Ian began to apologize to the jalapeno and inspected him to ensure he was not injured. 

Based on the human-jalapeno treaty. Any jalapeno that survives nacho cooking was free to live for the rest of their lives as a free jalapeno, not to be eaten by any humans hereon.

Sadly jalapenos don’t have a long life but better a free jalapeno, than an eaten jalapeno.

The jalapeno shook its finger at Ian with a mix of anger and glee, jumped and ran away a free pepper.

Ian on the other hand, had lost all his appetite and decided to call it a night and head to bed. He wasn’t that hungry anyways, and he wanted to be well-rested for his travels.

Bugdroid Meets Wall-E

Imagine a world..

You wake up one day to a changed world. Everyone seems to be an expert at a very set amount of things. Friends that could never put a tune together, suddenly sang beautifully. Those that had always complained about their math skills were now expert mathematicians. What happened?

A new machine was invented. A machine a la Matrix that can give you access to infinite amounts of information. All you have to do is connect yourself to it and after a few hours you’re able to learn everything you could ever imagine. But there’s a catch, access to this machine is limited. You can only use it one time. No returns, no exchanges. You have to choose wisely.

Now, I’ve given this a lot of thought, and it really made me realize where my priorities lie. The first thought that came to mind when creating this scenario was that I would choose to learn languages. ALL the languages and dialects of the world. The ability to communicate with everyone, anywhere would be amazing. I would be able to meet so many great people and build connections that I would otherwise have never made.

Just learning English when I moved to this country opened so many doors and it was only one language.It has allowed me to go to a school in the U.S. and get a degree, meet and date great people, and has made traveling easier. I’ve also been able to read so many books in their original language. I’ve always believed a book that has been translated is always bound to lose something in the process. Being able to speak every language of the world would make life interesting, that’s for sure.

So how about you? What would you choose? Where do your priorities lie?

Memento Mori

Hey! Did you know that Memento Mori is latin for “Remember that you will die”

It is often used as a reminder of the inevitability of death.

I find it quite inspiring.

 

So lately I’ve been feeling uncreative

So lately I’ve been feeling very uncreative. To help combat this, I was planning on going to a creative writing website that gives you a list of creative writing ideas from 1 to 346. You click on a number and it gives you a creative writing prompt:

But then I noticed the word uncreative was underlined in red!

Now that totally took me off guard because I seriously believed it was still an actual word. I right clicked it but it only showed me a suggestion to replace it: 

I had to Google it just to make sure, and according to the first Google results, it might indeed still be a word. Another one that gets to be a word is “Flibbertigibbet”. Which I had never heard of before.

Now I did a Google image search for Flibbertigibbet and the results were very… diverse.

Exhibit A: Man dressed up in a Satan costume holding a cat with a very serious face.

Exhibit B: Suspicious baby.

 

Exhibit C: The actual meaning of Flibbertigibbet:

 

 

What I learned from all of this: the meaning of flibbertigibbet, and that I am a flibbertigibbet.

P.s. Could anyone choose a number from 1 to 346, and I’ll write my next post based on that creative prompt. Thanks!

My phone’s acting stupid