today my sister cried very loudly and for a very long time because she was denied orange juice.

throughout this whole episode my brothers were reacting in the usual way that they do whenever she throws a tantrum. one has become able to shut it out, another frowns silently at the annoyance she's causing, the other tells her to keep quiet and the last one tries to calm her down. my father stares amusedly at her and keeps calling her name, my mother tries to explain it to her logically ('you can't have orange juice because it will cause phlegm') and everyone above 30 in the room were calling out familiar pacifying phrases, 'shhh, shhh, we'll get you apple juice instead okay?','don't cry, be a good girl now'.

and i just wondered, what does it feel like to be small? why does she cry over orange juice? why do children get so upset at getting denied something as simple as fruit juice that they resort to huge sobbing fits? and i realized, it never stops. at this very age i find myself getting frustrated or upset if i don't get the book/cd/jeans,etc i wanted, or if my mother is late in picking me up somewhere, or if my bread isn't toasted the way i like it. but i can't cry about it because it wouldn't be age-appropriate and it wouldn't be socially acceptable.

when you're a child, it's okay for you to cry and express your unhappiness with the world for depriving you of orange juice because no one really takes it seriously. none of us did, obviously. we didn't care that she really wanted orange juice. i was laughing for a bit and thinking, 'silly faith' and then life went on. i suppose my mother was the only one who bothered to explain to her why she could not have the orange juice. my mother often does this and i find myself asking her why she bothers, not realizing how much my sister really understands. there are a lot of times she surprises me. i wonder what she thinks of me and my brothers. being so small, she probably sees us as lumbering creatures who pause sometimes to ruffle her hair or pinch her cheeks - and that is all. does she understand that we love her because we pinch her cheeks and i braid her hair and tell her she is cute?

it's nice to know that dreams, wishes and desires exist from the moment you're born - even if they only exist in the form of orange juice.

sometimes i think the love of the family is so complex because it doesn't seem like (other) love. you can't choose in this case, not that love is a choice ... but you can't fall in love because you simply love from the start (at least that is all you know and remember). was there a point where i fell in love with my family? sometimes i fall in love with them again, but that was conscious and doesn't count. maybe when i was a baby my little being began to love my parents the moment i saw their faces and because they were the only ones i could love at that time (the only ones i would start to recognize after a while, the only ones constantly there when i awoke when i slept). so the first pangs of love start from recognition? i remember crying terribly as a child whenever they went away on trips and trying desperately to keep their voices alive on the phone line. the most dismal sound at that point of time for me was the hangup tone. i suppose when you're small you feel incredibly vulnerable when your parents go away and now i still do though not to that extent. so i guess i am still a child and i don't know if i will ever stop being one. is it childish to feel insecure when your parents aren't in the house?

and why do i love my brothers? this is different because they came after me and not before. the recognition idea doesn't work here. but maybe we just become accustomed to each others' presence day in and day out, we learn to love because we are taught that we have to, that we should love our siblings? can love be taught? maybe it is simply awakened in us. maybe we can love anyone if we're simply shown that we can (when you're young nothing is impossible). we barely exchange two words most of the time (i don't see them for days on end because i'm working) and we don't confide in each other and we don't share and sometimes i feel we don't really share any connection ... yet i love them, inexplicably. i know it's silly to try and explain these things but its one of the mysteries of the universe that will always befuddle me. why do we love the people that we love? and the answer is very simple, the answer is: we just do. which isn't much of an answer and yet is the best answer to the question and sometimes this really frustrates me that i can't get to the bottom of it! and i feel like a science-y person at these times like i'm trying so hard to break down walls and analyze things too much - but then, that's what art does too, isn't it? in a sense artists have their own eurekas and discoveries which never seem to be acknowledged. why is it that in the World News, headlines like 'Scientist Discovers X food Causes Cancer' are so frequent whereas things like 'Chekhov Discovers that Love is Our Natural State' is never published? does this discovery not concern the world at large? because it does! not everyone gets cancer - but everyone loves. statistically the odds are against the scientist headline. we set such peculiar and illogical standards for ourselves (what is headline-worthy and what is not).

and i suppose people will say that it's because the Chekhov headline is debatable whilst the Scientist thing is set in stone. why is it that scientific proof makes things less debatable? because anyone can refute love but not everyone can refute science without proper knowledge. isn't that sad?! LOVE HAS BEEN AROUND LONGER THAN CANCER OR AIDS OR ANY OTHER DISEASE! LOVE was there first, so why do people still question its existence?

i always confuse love and art because to me they always seem to be the same thing, and maybe they aren't but that's a lesson i have yet to learn.

sometimes i wonder if my brothers love me. i know they do (it's such a confusingly logical thing to know that your family loves you) but it's easy to forget and i like to keep tangible reminders for myself because without them i feel too much like a child (instead of the eldest sister i'm supposed to be).

*

today i watched my father sleep for awhile. i was supposed to wake him up but i hesitated and i don't know why. maybe i wanted to study his face - it was like looking into a mirror and becoming fascinated with your reflection. the small gape of his mouth as he slept, the stubby eyelashes and non-descript nose. how do i describe features that look like mine? i'm not sure of how they look individually (how do you imagine your father's face being taken apart?), but together they transposed themself into something a little too familiar. this familiarity carries a coat of responsibility, obligation and guilt with it which i keep telling myself i'll finally grow into when i'm older.

*

i'm very tired of myself. i seem to be totally incapable of writing anything. there are tons of ideas that i think could lead to poems but i just cannot turn my thoughts into poetry, cannot turn all the above into poetry, and i shouldn't be negative and all because it won't help matters but i'm only saying this to let you know that i am truly upset about this. maybe i'm not disciplined enough, i don't know but i will try because maybe i haven't been trying hard enough but again i don't know. i hate the words 'i don't know' because i use them so often i don't even know what they mean anymore (there, again).

+ posted by M @ 3:36 AM