Peaches in Wonderland

Part 1 : (Appearance vs. Reality)

A very wise friend of mine told me today that she only found emotional stimulation from characters in fictional novels. No, she is not an anti social bitch - and neither am I (I might add), for I find myself in very much a similar position.

It is given that our personal taste of life is often shaped through the myriad of individuals we encounter. From these characters, we are splattered with vivid recollections and retellings which slowy & steadily after time, become: one part reality and two parts appearance. So in many ways our personal history becomes our personal fiction, because it is constantly being retold through our emotional attatchement to particular scenarios. We are like old soldiers comming out of a war, some experiences we speak of, other we chose not to. However, it is the stories which remain untold that realistically come to shape who we are. We do not avoid stories of this second kind because they are sad, they are simply a legacy from our childhood days upon which only WE are allowed to reminisce.

I am lucky enough to say, that my grand inspiration in life has already come and gone. When I was fifteen, I sat in the middle of a forest and declared to my best friend that if I ever found myself in an emotional maze, I would always remember that I was fortunate enough to be handed the gift of life. It seems unbelievebly sentimental for a teenager, but this was simply a message my childhood friend left for me.

(Part 2: House of Whispers)

Jenny was 4 years younger than me and we played together when we were children whenever our mothers sipped green tea and complained about their husbands. She had curious, clairvoyant eyes - always analysing, always watching. Like Simon from The Lord ofthe Flies. She would talk to me almost in whipsers, and unfortunately I was probably not listening. Calling her smart is perhaps borderline insulting, for she was not only smart, she was too smart, unbearably smart for this life - So she spun out our realm when she was six years old, falling down seven stories like a flying cherub.

Since then, approximately a decade has passed, yet I still find myself holding onto Jenny, holding onto her pearls of wisdom - whispering them to myself in times of defeat. I thought of her last year when I screamed to be taken away with her, only to find myself being carried away and leaving only a diamond trail of useless tears. I thought of her after the passing of my Grandpa - wondering whether they knew the domino effect of suffering that they had left behind. It sounds like a twisted cliche, but I even thought of her after I lost my virginity, thinking about daily generalisations about pain - wondering whether she, had felt pain.

The most honest questions are those which are posed by children. So I believe that in many ways, I am still very much a child, a child narrating upon grand narratives of life, always finding myself on the verge of answering such eternal questions, but never comming close. In my novel, I am a kaleidescope of sweet and sour. My fictonal name is crazy Peaches - my sidesick is my little sister Jenny.