a book of ordinary people

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;



Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,



And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.



I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost,

On the way back home there were two routes to pick from : the short route and the pretty route...
Dad would always pick the pretty route...
That was his philosophy in life : "So what if you get home five minutes later than you are supposed to; you gotta enjoy the ride..."

Happy Birthday Baba joon...
Thank you for all the rides...

Labels: ordinary stories

When you can't escape, and you constantly rely on everyone else, you learn to cry by smiling, you know?
" The sea inside"


Yesterday when she came home she heard the news and stared at the wall, just like when they told her that grandma was gone for good or that one time that ....
Once again she was going to gather all her courage to go out and live her life pretending that nothing has happened...
And then the unthinkable happened, the tears started rolling done her face ,and the only thing that she could think of at that moment was her best friend, had she been here she would've been shocked, she had never seen her crying. She tried to get up and look at herself in the mirror and make herself stop the weakness....
She was born in a nation of mourners, her father was a rebel, growing up he taught them that constant happiness is a civil disobedient ; She never learnt how to mourn....
The other night she hold one of the "Mafatihs," that her aunt had donated in the memory of her grandparents and her long lost aunt; her aunt asked her if she cried a lot when grandma passed away and all she could say was :" She was a great woman.." and hold on to her tears just like she always did...

Someone died last night , it could've been anyone. She looked at her end table and saw three different bottle of pills and she knew she couldn't stop the tears anymore, she had hold on to enough tears just to turn them into an ulcer that was gnawing her stomach away.
Someone died, someone dear , someone who once meant something to a lot of people. She knew it wasn't fair, it was too soon, too sudden but then she knew there was nothing that she could do to stop it, there was nothing that she could to bring back anyone from dead....

Last night for the first time in her life she sat down and cried for hours; for the first time in her life she mourned a loss, or maybe more than one. So she mourned the loss of all she couldn't bring back to her life anymore, dead or alive, she even mourned the losses of pieces of herself that were long gone...

The next day she woke up shaking, she was not even able to hold on to her toothbrush. She was not quiet sure what to make of it, did mourning come with a hang over?
In the afternoon again she found herself driving and aimlessly crying....
She still wasn't able to bring anyone back from dead...

She came home and stared at grandma's turquoise prayer beads, the one that she gave her the last time she saw her. The ones that she took to all the pilgrimages that she made throughout her life.

She had not felt so free in a long time ...

Labels: ordinary stories