Voukah [Voo-kah]; home

Clutch

Stall.

Trials and tribulations. Just a few more tries with the clutch and the gas, and

stall.

Adventures taken afar down University Avenue, just hoping you don’t miss that exam. The bumps and jerking from uneven roads, construction and dirt roads. That asshole that just suddenly braked, then

stall.

On, then off. On then off. The scent of dalgongae and expensive bakery foods. You looked vigilantly with me as we looked for that one elusive parking spot on Yonge Street, following behind equally hesitant and situationally unaware drivers. We’re on our way to see our friends yet again. When night falls, you take us all to our homes. Sometimes we take the scenic route. Sometimes the completly opposite direction. You follow behind a bus and right when the light turns green,

stall.

Another day along Bovaird Drive. You respond with me with profanities in different languages as that dimwit cuts you off in this large road. The faint smell of earth, vinyl and rain is strangely welcoming. I smell it on my lab coat as  hastily punch in for my shift into the dispensary. You watch the sun set as I step away to earn whatever cost it takes to keep you running. You greet me like every day that I walk in, and as I back out, I forget about the puddle and pothole that you kindly remind me exists with a jolt and shake as the wheel plops. In panic, I let go of the clutch, and

stall.

You encase us as we are not sure about our emotions. Both of us are scarred hearts and souls. We want to love, but neither of us truly feel ready. You listen and say nothing in response. You simply listen as I fumble with words, ideas, rants and inconsistencies. You know already, but you’ll be happy to know she married someone. You do this as you take me home to my front door. I make my way up the hill of a parking lot, and

stall.

You keep me company as I watch the clouds in the sky pass us on the Gardiner Expressway. You’ve heard my offkey singing, impersonations,  satire, feverish rants and silent rage. You know because sometimes I grip the wheel a bit tighter than usual. You know that life is complicated, and that I’m scared to change. But you came with me anyways. All that support you’ve given me until I drive up to the residental road to walk and get the shared keyfob for the hospital parking, but I got a bit too close to the curb and

stall.

You kept me safe. I left you alone. We had to change your window when someone decided to break you in. But we both know you’re more than that. All that to write an admission exam I never bothered to use. You’re the only one that didn’t try to push or pull me somewhere. You only took me forward. You even entertained me to quell my mind when I couldn’t sleep. I always felt smothered, but even then you’ve kept me free in encasement. A night drive in a beautiful countryside with trees I’ve never seen before, in a small town that was clearly sleeping but still strangely alive. We saw this together. We tried to take a left turn at a stop sign and

stall.

I don’t really know how to appreciate a marvel of engineering. You’ve grown with me and took me everywhere. You’ve been the most reliable, even if you decided not to stay cool in a swelteringly hot August summer some years. I decide to sit with you a little longer, in a beautiful residential road as I eat a taro bolo bao and muscat grape soda while listening to dozen of classical pieces I can’t even recognize. I don’t really know how to feel about suddenly not experiencing my world with you again. It’s been quite a ride. I hope you’ll get to experience this with someone else too. We’ll go for another short ride. Neither of us will

stall.

Leaf

In a world rich with foliage, dense with the smell of stirred earth and dampness, you could feel life as it stirs itself awake as it’s masked by the pianissimo cymbals of swaying leaves. All moves to the silent waltz of daybreak and gentle wind.

As life continues to stir, an aqueous humour surges through the veins of each leaf, siphoning what its twig and branch can bring. Colourless in the absence of light, but rich with life, each still mustering what is essential for preparing for the light. All could not exist without basking in gentle light, though only hoping that dawn does not bring a despotic shine. Prompt, almost garish, with its pedal protrusions from its core, sucking in moisture from nature with seemingly mammalian instinct. Veins so quintessential but minimalist, lacking anastomotic connections within its fabric, its life becomes so obliviously fragile and temporary. So fleeting, carried away in a breeze just barely more turbulent than its comfort.

All is not lost; identical contingencies surround each blade, rocking in similar directions with each gust, clattering the same sounds with turbulence, and siphoning at the same rate. Beautiful, but woefully mundane.

And yet, just a closer observation into one vestigial of a branch, and you could see what is rife with life, its struggles and its passions. What appears like a simple ebb and flow in its vessels, microscopically, is a flow so turbulent and strained that could rival a tumultuous storm. All of this as part of its way of sustaining its own fragility, for one day it will detach from its anchor and slowly wilt unceremoniously. Returning its own calamity to the stems and roots of its tree, continuing the cycle until the weight of the bark, branches and roots can no longer bare its own struggles. But until then, you’d wonder, what conscious appreciation there would be for where it is. Is this seen as a blessing? A curse? Or a neutral disregard as providence? At what point does a blossom understand the weight of its existence being a propagation of its ancestors? Or does that even happen at all? Is there remorse for the departing leaves, or for leaves that progressively siphon less in a jest for some unknown greater good?

Or does no one see past the greater foliage, in its monotonous uniformity, blissfully unaware of its complexities and its tribulations that, collectively, form only a minute part of an entire tree?

Flicker

Five hundred leagues under the sun, and you’ll feel the pressure on your skull. A weightless mass so heavy and coarse, the friability of human flesh eventually gives into its density. All the winds of change, of daily cares, of violent sounds within the murmuring. All the deafening silence and the clattering of teeth against nails. All this electrostatic tension that pulls the heart in multiple directions. Somehow, we all seem to walk happily wounded. I wonder if it is that we are truly feigning pain, or are truly blissfully unaware. Do meridians flow through us, or are we flowing on the forces of nature that shear – that burn, or that freeze?

I walked through a world so strangely foreign, but apparently mundane. A walk through a familiar creek, on a familiar path, and yet I still felt so detached and misplaced. I couldn’t help but feel so inhuman and removed from my surroundings, like a bishop in a game of checkers. Buds awakening from hibernation within both herculean trees and thin and dilapidated branches and the subtle flow and bubbling of water behind me. Streams that flow like calm fingers through a bed of marshmallow, slowly but surely gripping firm ground. People pass by me – or do they? I can’t tell if these pedestrians are truly random or simply a mirage. I don’t appear to exist to them, and I don’t feel alive when around them. Perhaps we live on different dimensions but perceive the same puzzle of life.

Tired, but invigorated. I’m in a world that is slowly fading away from my senses. A world that I barely feel. A world I don’t quite belong.

World

Ambivalence is the greatest blindness. In the humbling presence of luscious greens of trees and the sweet harmonious melodies of otherwise visceral tendencies, often the beauty ordained by nature becomes muted. A nihilistic shroud cannot help but desaturate the voracity of life as it exists, or as it presents.

Or, perhaps, is it the garish that steals the light from our eyes, or the cacophony that expires the last air from our ears? Perhaps it is this blindness, this deafness, from where phantasmagoria is birthed – is nurtured, is sated.

Then, the letters fall out of place, in a symphony of pitter-patter and fractals.