Insomnia

It’s amazing, really, how things change. I went from having four blogs bookmarked: Mine, Allie’s, Jiyun’s and Reem’s–to twelve. I feel like a trend setter! That’s something new. And what else is new is that i’m typing this from the local Borders Books & Cafe. Free Wi-Fi, isn’t that just splendid?

Sitting in Mass today, with my head tucked within my palms, I thought about reading. Not the act of reading or the desire to, I thought of how it affects the human psyche. In my head I carefully slid out a giant, white canvas and looked upon it. Then I recalled all the novels I had read in the past. Of course I couldn’t think of them all, but as the titles appeared, I painted the vividness of the scenes I could remember from each novel. I thought of the multitude of stars Mr. Wind-Up Bird saw from the bottom of a well. I thought of the lovers entwined in each other’s arms in the darkness of a park in Dublin. I recalled a rotting, green corpse sitting on the back of a wagon driven by the Bundren family towards New Hope. I thought of the dancing skeletons of lightning gazed upon by Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba and the silk worm eggs within a precious tin box, held in the arms of Desdemona.

As these fierce and beautiful images filled and painted the canvas, I could feel my eyeballs dart back and forth behind the closed curtains of my eyelids. My mind, flooded by wondrous lands and smells and the sounds of familiar voices, head feeling lighter and my eyes fluttered open.

The sun had broken through the clouds and shone through the grand stained glass windows of the church onto the praying people in pews. Reciting words memorized from years of attendance. Robotic speech and movement. I let my eyes adjust to the light and I took a deep breath. I looked down at my hands because that’s what I do when I am unsure of my own existence.

I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS A TRAIN

My days were spent sitting on rusted tracks. I hadn't moved in years.
I was a train dressed in the finest graffiti. Humans looked upon me like I was a work of art.

They vandalized me. I was covered
in colors, in layers and layers of anarchy and dreams of the hopeless.

I was scarred with streaks of rain. dandelions still grew beneath me despite the clouds of carbon dioxide. On the road, everyone is the same.

They all come and go. Faces pressed upon car windows, lifeless human beings. I can't remember how it felt like to have a destination. This was all after the hurricane.

(No one expected it. It tore up everything. And we all lost something then.)
The lights we saw was a flashlight from God. He lost something too, I think. It was too dark to see.
We were left waiting for the sun to rise.
Gray became a disease, a plague, and it made my engine want to burst.

An estimated three hundred and forty strands of horse hairs and an unbearable amount of color are spread along the page. Stroke
after stroke, glances like eyes
in search of

But we should wait for the sun to rise, shouldn't we?

"As every professional, I started from the lower level, from the bottom, without knowing what was ahead of me."

flos
Noun
flōs (genitive floris); m,

1. flower, blossom
2. (figuratively) The best kind or part of something.
3. (figuratively) The prime; best state of things.

Hello. My name is Claire Rementilla. I want to be a travel journalist and this is where it will begin. I attend college in the Fall and I have everything to look forward to. Driven by my intense passion and keen eye for opportunity, I know I can pursue my dreams. I have here the latin definition of 'flos', meaning the best part of something. The flos of traveling for me are those awe-inspiring moments when I realize that the world is not so small afterall. When my eyes lose the ability to grasp the vastness or the richness of a new land. When my senses overflow with the euphoria of new tastes and smells. When I feel my heart swell from the mere smile of a stranger. These moments is what I live for and nothing more.

I am seventeen and I have the world at my fingertips. Follow me.