Crystalline Knowledge

Crystal

Do you always trust your first initial feeling

Special knowledge holds truth bears believing

I turned around

And the water was closing all around

Like a glove

Like the love that had finally, finally found me

Then I knew

In the crystalline knowledge of you

Drove me thru the mountains

Thru the crystal-like clear water fountain

Drove me like a magnet

To the sea

How the faces of love have changed turning the pages

And I have changed oh, but you...you remain ageless

I turned around

And the water was closing all around

Like a glove

Like the love that had finally, finally found me

Then I knew

In the crystalline knowledge of you

Drove me thru the mountains

Thru the crystal-like clear water fountain

Drove me like a magnet

To the sea

Stevie Nicks

My friends told me hillarious stories that they gave permission to include in this blog. As I am sitting here, it dawns on me that I can't use them. The reason? Because they are not mine to tell. They were funny as hell but it didn't resound to me so that I can make it my own. By taking them and trying to make them my own, I'd be losing my voice, I feel. There will be stories from my friends which will end up in this page but they would have to ring a bell in me.

Heck, all the song lyrics and poems I've appropriated have all come from somewhere as they aren't really mine. But they spoke to me. They mean something to me and whether I can fully explain the connections of the various texts and what they symbolize to me, are another story but somehow I've made them mine and my interaction with the texts has made mine. They might mean something to someone else. There's a literary theory which for the life of me I cannot recall.

What does 'Crystal' mean to me? It puts to words what I feel. Feelings that I cannot put into words like she can. It's how I feel about certain situation or certain people. It might not all fit one person or one situation completely. I know how it feels like when she sings "I turned around/ And the water was closing all around/ Like a glove/ Like the love that had finally, finally found me." When something is definitely right, and you didn't expect it to be so, don't you just feel it in your very bones? The knowledge of it being right submerges and immerse you completely that there is no room for doubt. But then my way of saying it isn't as beautiful as hers. But the truth in the lines speaks so clearly to me and when that happens it's like deja vu. "I know that!! That's how I feel when such and such happen."

The very phrase "crystall ine knowledge" itself resounds in me. There are things that you just know. They don't come like lightning-- they come like something you discover within you. Rather like the Jungian universal consciousness and archetypes. It's already there, in you, just waiting for the right moment for you to discover it. If you bothered to, that is.

I'll be the first person to own up to the fact that there are so many things that I don't know. I feel that I'm surrounded by people who know more than me. I cannot quote you lines, or from books, or this theory or that theory. I can't remember hard and fast fact to save my life, like how to convert Farenheit to Celcius but I know that I'm intuitive. I read people rather well. I can tell by looking at someone if s/he can or cannot accept certain depth in their conversations with me.

I guess that's why I have many different groups of acquaintances/friends. If you talk to different groups, you will find that they regard me and what I mean to them or what I know differently. I have a group of friend with whom I'm the foremost authority of hair and make-up. There's another group who thinks that I'm a hardcore feminist. The list goes on and on. I'm not being a hypocrite. I am a feminist who knows her blusher from her lipgloss as well as her. I'm all that and more.

However, due to lack of time or inclination on my part or that I think that they cannot handle more than that, that's all they see of me. It's not always my decision either to say "Ok, she can't handle philosophy" or "Oh, I can talk about anything with her", people generally make the choice themselves. They choose what they want to hear and all you can do is go with the flow. A conversation is always about testing the water. At least with me, it is.

The first rule of conversation is about making the other person comfortable. Even if your passion is Antartica, you don't bend the other person's ear about Antartica when s/he is clearly glazed over and glassy-eyed about the subject. You find some common ground then you can have a conversation that lasts more than two minutes.

In conversations you can figure out the other person. What they are or aren't is revealed when they open their mouths. You can tell so much about a person just by paying attention and this is the communication strategy/skills that most people lack. You can tell if the person is widely read, observant, insightful or not in a conversation. Since Malaysians are not the world most avid readers, I find myself surrounded by idiots on regular basis. Snobbish of me probably but there you go. Someone wise once said, and he's famous too, just I can't recall his name, "It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubts."

I probably am removing all doubt even as I'm typing this.

Peace!