The Pakistan Fashion Design Council in collaboration with Sunsilk presented the fourth and final day of the eighth PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week. Indeed the 8th PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week marked the twelfth fashion week platform initiated by the Pakistan Fashion Design Council [with eight weeks of prêt-à-porter and four of bridal fashion] and was a direct manifestation of the Council’s commitment to sustainability and discipline within the business of fashion and the facilitation of Pakistan’s retail industry. Indeed #PSFW15 endeavoured to define and present trends for 2015, focusing specifically on fashion for the regions’ long hot summer months. Day-4 featured High-Street Fashion shows by the House of Arsalan Iqbal, Erum Khan, Chinyere and Hassan Riaz and designer prêt-à-porter shows by Sana Safinaz, Republic by Omar Farooq, Syeda Amera, Huma & Amir Adnan, Sania Maskatiya and HSY.

Speaking about the PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week platform, Chairperson of the PFDC, Sehyr Saigol said: “With the 12th iteration of our critically acclaimed fashion weeks, the PFDC is always working to streamline our prêt-à-porter platform to make the PSFW experience more beneficial for all stakeholders in terms of show experience, exposure and ultimately, retail value. To that end, each year we look inward to find the best possible formats and categories to benefit the very trade and business of fashion. In this vein, we introduced 3 separate categories for Luxury/Prêt, High Street and Textile at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week, giving each entirely separate show space, times, audience exposure and viewing power. Our High Street fashion brands had been given a standalone show time on two separate days as early evening shows and Textile brands a separate dedicated day for Voile shows on Day 3 of PSFW 2015, a measured step to further highlight Pakistan’s textile prowess and high street fashion strength which are of significant importance to national and international fashion markets. As per past tradition, we continue to work closely with all our emerging designers and mainstream brands to help hone their collections for the runway through mentorship by senior PFDC Council members and with retail support through the PFDC’s own stores and network. We are grateful for the committed support of our sponsors and partners which provides us the stimulus to further enhance our fashion week platforms and put forth the best face of Pakistani fashion on a consistent basis.”

“The Sunsilk girl is an achiever, with an air of enthusiasm and positivity. Great hair can give her the extra dose of confidence so with Sunsilk by her side, she is empowered to take on life. Fashion is very close to this aspirational Pakistani girl making the PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week a highly valued platform for us. We recognize PFDC’s efforts to promote the fashion industry and experienced and upcoming talent alike. Sunsilk has been a part of this fantastic journey for 6 consecutive years and continues to shape aspirations, taking contemporary fashion directly to the homes of consumers and encouraging them to script their own stories of success” said Asanga Ranasinghe, VP Home and Personal Care for Unilever Pakistan.

On the concluding day of #PSFW15, the Chairperson of the PFDC Mrs. Sehyr Saigol also made a special announcement on behalf of the Council and its Board Members, where she shared the Council’s plans to establish Pakistan’s first ever craft based Design District, a multi-purpose specialized facility that would assist in developing and enhancing the arts and crafts industries, which are an integral part of Pakistan’s rich cultural legacy. In addition to being a centre for skill improvement and capacity building, the Design District would also house a first of its kind Textile Museum.

The official spokesperson of the PFDC, Sara Shahid of Sublime by Sara also announced the official dates for the Council’s next fashion week, PFDC L’Oréal Paris Bridal Week 2015 which is scheduled to be held from 15th September to 17th September 2015.

Indeed the success of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week continued to prompt private sector associates to grow in their engagement of the platform to launch new marketing campaigns and promotional activities. To this end, the PFDC’s evolving partnership with Sunsilk grew exponentially this year whereby in addition to their title patronage; Sunsilk also took over the coveted PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week red carpet and the Green Room/Backstage, as sponsors. This extension of their support is indeed a manifestation of the brand’s belief in and commitment to the platform. Also in continuation of their support for the platform, Fed Ex – GSP Pakistan Gerry’s International returned to PSFW as the official logistics partner, offering the PFDC a special arrangement for international designer consignments.

PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 was styled by the creative teams at Nabila’s and NGENTS. Light design, set design, sound engineering, video packaging, choreography and show production from concept to construction was by HSY Events, front stage management by Maheen Kardar Ali, backstage management by Product 021, Sara Shahid of Sublime by Sara as the official spokesperson for the PFDC, logistics and operations by Eleventh Experience and photography by Faisal Farooqui and the team at Dragonfly, Hum TV/Hum Sitaray as the Official Media Partners, CityFM89 as the Official Radio Partners with all media management by Lotus Client Management & Public Relations.

High-Street Fashion Shows

The House of Arsalan Iqbal

The afternoon High-Street Fashion Shows on the final day of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 were opened by leading fashion brand The House of Arsalan Iqbal, who showcased a collection titled ‘Devolution Chic’. Inspired by street art across the world by various artists, European high-street trends and technique of quilting, Arsalan Iqbal garnered personal portfolios of graffitists from myriad urban cityscapes such as London, New York, Tokyo, Barcelona and Cape Town, juxtaposed with some unique in-house created patterns including those of Pac-man, calligraphic flourishes and aqua and tangerine bands and circlets. Based in chiffon, the ensembles were molded into voluminous structured silhouettes including draped tunics, edgy jumpsuits and wide palazzos dovetailed with off-white and ecru charmeuse silk jackets created with a revolutionary quilting process. Along with menswear pieces, the collection also included in-house footwear and jewellery made in collaboration with pioneering Karachi-based street artist SANKI.

Erum Khan

Designer Erum Khan followed next and made her PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week debut with ‘The Untainted Shine’. The collection took its inspiration from the sparkle of twinkling stars, a walk on pearl dew in the morning and the enchanted glow which is produced when “a magic wand” is waved around the body, making it glow in a pearlescent white and exhibiting a jewel themed lustre on the body. With neat and straight structured cuts, Erum had used fabrics such as organza combined with silk, 3D flowers, patch work and antique katdanna in a collection which was based in a white colour palette. Trends highlighted in the collection were high waist skirts to button up pants and sheer long dresses. Acclaimed Pakistani musician Goher Mumtaz and his wife Anam Ahmed walked the ramp as the designer’s celebrity showstoppers.

Chinyere

Following Erum Khan, fashion brand Chinyere showcased its Spring/Summer 2015 High-Street collection ‘Mizaj-e-Shahana’ at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015. An ode to the era of the Mughal royalty and their imperial aesthetic, the collection comprised of modern silhouettes and traditional embellishments with organza skirts paired with cropped tops, angarkha-peplum tops with embellished cigarette pants, sheer knee-length jackets paired with structured digital printed bustier-jumpsuits, diaphanous wrap-around boot-cuts and embellished boxy sleeves with soft A-line silhouettes. Chinyere also showcased ten menswear pieces comprising of waistcoats, jodhpurs, knee-length sherwanis paired with gossamer sheer kurtas. The colours used had been divided into a collection of distinctive Mughalesque pastels and jewel tones. The pastels included the classic marble ivory-on-ivory, the bold black, saffron, gold and ivory. The colour segments also included metallic gold and grey sections, with accents of bronze and black. The jewel tones included jade, emerald, ruby and sapphire.

Hassan Riaz

The concluding High-Street fashion show of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 was presented by Hassan Riaz who showcased his ‘Contained Shadows’ collection. Inspired by the diverse facets of the human soul that explore both the dark and light sides of human nature, taking into account yearnings, desires, and anxieties that make us distinctly human, Hassan had based the collection in summer twill, organza and summer denim in shades of blue and white with a gold accent to reflect upon his inspirations. ‘Contained Shadows’ made use of structured and drifting silhouettes, cage crinolines with corsets and bustiers with distinct trends featuring cropped tops, nautical accents, experiments with transparency and patchworks of metal mixed & matched with flowers.

Designer Showcases

Sana Safinaz

PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015’s evening [rêt shows on the fourth and final day was opened by premier designer label Sana Safinaz. Sana Safinaz’s PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week collection was inspired by monochromatic structured looks with pops of color. The collection was based in luxe fabrics such as kattan, silks, fine silk organza and dutches satin in a colour palette majorly based in black and white with strong vibrant pop infusions.
Key trends being highlighted were the oversized T, constructions-clean lines, simplicity of cuts and effective embellishments.

Republic by Omar Farooq

Following Sana Safinaz, acclaimed menswear brand Republic By Omar Farooqshowcased a collection titled ‘Que Sera, Sera!’ (whatever will be, will be!). Omar Farooq had used a variety of luxe fabrics such as suede, linen, chiffon, cotton, cotton silk and wool silk. A collection for all seasons, the ensembles built upon the label’s signature aesthetics while providing a new take on contemporary menswear. Acclaimed media personality Fawad Khan walked the ramp as the brand’s celebrity showstopper.

Syeda Amera

The third Prêt show of the final day of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 was presented by designer Syeda Amera who made her ramp debut with ‘The World of Sea’. Inspired by love for the enchanting underwater, the collection was based in premium quality organza, jersey, nets and silks with delicate cuts and embellishments consisting of beads, sequins and feathers to reflect the collection’s aquatic theme. ‘The World of Sea’ featured a palette of aqua marine, scupa blue, powder pink, grey blue, tequila sunrise yellow, orange and lagoon green with trends that employed skirt layering, frills and ruffles and flared pants.

Huma & Amir Adnan

Following Syeda Amera, Huma & Amir Adnan showcased a joint collection for the first time at a fashion exhibition. Both Huma and Amir feel that as a couple they share their lives and draw synergies and their collection ‘Symphony’ was an epitome of how two people can revolve around the same concept in harmony, while maintaining their individual distinction. Showcasing both menswear and women’s wear at PSFW 2015, Huma and Amir had used a mix of fabrics, textures and embellishments with a complex collection of weaves, prints and embroideries in silk, linen, cotton and microfiber. The color palette included midnight blue, emerald green, wet earth, aubergine, ivory, old paper, turmeric, leaf and magenta. Key trends highlighted in the collection were long shirts, double layered shirts, printed vests and jackets, textured pants, colored shoes for men and layers of multi-textured fabrics, tighter silhouette, vests and jackets for women.

Sania Maskatiya

Designer Sania Maskatiya showcased the penultimate Luxury/Prêt collection of the evening at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015. This S/S ’15, Sania Maskatiya took audiences on a fashion journey to ‘Paristan’ – a place of fairytale whimsy at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week. With a colour palette ranging from the softest shades of daybreak to the deepest hues of nightfall, ‘Paristan’ was a collection of playful, dreamlike prêt ensembles. Featuring luxury fabrics like silk, organza, charmeuse and crepe, the pieces followed the brand’s signature silhouettes, both structured and fluid. Beads and sequins embellished varied hemlines and multiple layering, all set against captivating scenes of mirth and magic. Motifs ranged from the sublime to nonsensical; friendly mice and naughty elves, clocks and teapots, flowering fields and star-filled skies, princesses and ponies.

HSY

Day-4’s finale was presented by acclaimed couturier HSY who showcased a collection titled ‘INK’; a collection inspired by Asia and specifically HSY’s journeys to The Land of the Rising Sun. INK represented the essence of Langkawi, Indonesia, Nagasaki, and Yunnan with natural and indigenous yarns, hand-woven to perfection. The collection featured the traditional dyeing techniques of Shibori from Nagasaki, Batik from Indonesia, and Gara from Sierra Leone infused with mackintosh, saffron, aubergine, eggshell, rosette, indigo and ochre. Created with the scorching sub continental summer in mind, INK channelled versatile hemlines to suit a diversity of younger, older, working men, women and homemakers alike.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-brisbane

Around* the time
Both eyes
So fixated double-book
  Marked inside the
    fairytale
      *     *    
She spread her layers
Like the Bitter beauty
So truly ribbons curly
Like the beast changed
her fruit
Please come home soon

Trying to sugarcoat stars
My date with the moon wars
Silk thread My sweet Lord

Remembering the taste
A forever not forgotten
the beat wrong words may
get you both in heat

A glass of wine I love thee
Share the good eats
And pray "Mighty God" life is hard
So misleading silk heart of words
What was truly said
over again to repeat
The best silver playful
wings of white's
like a shrine all mine

The smile when your
the heart is the aching
Love didn't feel right
Those confessions
to play out the
innocent love dose night

He summons her on
Queen Antionette
Killing me softly

French silk pastry I love thee
Not to pry covering up the
commander

Layers he could smell
She's settling in
Like the splendor picnic
grass of fruit
What a big mouth
He has the perfect foot

It's her the Owl toot
The hard labor of words
Overlaid  like under
the weather maid
Finely crafted silk leather
Florence Italy boots

To fought out in every dip
of his fruit
Vegetables the envy
of the green planet of Kale
She was so jaded
Layering Silk Thine
It's time to be mated
The many layers of his smile
Shadowed over the windows
strangers enchanted by what they saw

Like Tomato vine silk
thine running away from love
There was note pulling them back
The longer you wait for
a double feature smack

Meeting the dark hawks
Nothing could stop her
When he talks wind blows
Magical silk tongue
drips overflow

Silk weave on his
white crisp shirt
His tears met my blouse
talk can be cheap but not
from your spouse

The bed looks like
the heart of science
The heart of silk birds
communicate to
the brain of buzzing bees
Missed the timeless
train____ on your knees

Whats more death do us part
Something took a beating
Eternal return to me meeting

I silk Thine or rose thorn for me
What about the day

You were born the sign
and meanings
The brain overworked
our hearts
Two newlywed blue worker collar

Like a citation scholarly
Turned into a citation court
order of traffic

Layering all his missteps
play up her lips
Easy for most play along
toe to toe ring
He's the Hub that bubbly wish
"English Yardley" sing
Style of writing waved
her in the tub

Whispering words
all layered like
a dark promise
She had a Blackout

Mercilessly another sip
Divine silk  Turkish coffee
All in the weave of
dark clouds
on his sleeve

Mom the dressmaker such a
miracle worker
Cleaning up secrets the tears so
many delicate sides of years

Mail order bride stargazer
  heart stopped when
he dressed her
Layering on Silk Thine
Mr. and Mrs. Valentine
Regine
Physiological mechanism
My silk of words theory
His beard heart stubble

What truly appeals
Meditation the truth heals
Sumptuous layered
strawberry
shortcake more
time too short

Her wavy hair in
his heart of palms
Swinging from the trees
Making such a ruckus

Her nerve ending
like a sad song story
Robin Birds bring
on the Morning Glory
Every September
Silk stir of wine
To see the thine
*Precious Silk Rose,
you had me
Star*

Watching the world
of poems light
Why "God"
Saying how come tonight
Or not tonight please make it
"Holy Night"

He loves the way
you look how you turn
your head
On the side
of his glide

Your sleeping in
his bed he
looks at you with
layers of sweetness

The intricate swirls
collecting into
the elegant character
of love.  
However,
to step back and view
each individual tendril,
is it love I see
or lust?
What is building this
firework of magnificence?  
The powers of passion,
or the powers of trust?  
The layering of the two
create the wedding cake of tranquility.

Chapter 1

There was a woman. The cost to love her was your life. No other payment but a sending off, a revolver cocked to your temple’s side.
There was no spite in your death, just business.
Hell of a business to run.

I was protecting someone. Never been one to stick around, but this drag had carried for the past year. That gang-owned joint lay but two doors and a cold alley away. Popular place, maybe not the classiest but it had its patrons. Packed with your essentials: pool tables, dirt-licked walls and chairs, mean folk mixed in with the nice. Old fashioned joint with a history. You could almost feel it when you walked in. That small pressure when it’s about to rain? Felt like that had been building up for a decade there.
Some Madonna owned it. Names elude me, but she was just another front; as was the barkeep, the hired bouncers and those mean-eyed slingers that spoke loud in company, silent alone. Heh, almost like an old-fashioned saloon. Who the hell am I in this tale of cowboys and crooks?
I was holed up in that apartment block for the winter. Stiff drapes covering a stiff cold that seeped through the cracks anyway. Cold chills to wake to, and the whiskey don’t warm a **** thing. Maybe it was the ache of a past flame that led me to her. That old touch had languished and misted away in the night of some long dead memory, leaving an old kiss from a young lover on my shivering body. It grew faint with every year’s passing. I struggle to remember this keepsake.
Every night.
I was a no name protector protecting a no name ghost of a man. Yeah we knew each other. I’m no stranger to keep past talking terms . . . but, hell if I remember his name, how we got into this **** situation and why. Mind’s a little off. Been like that for years.

It was a stumble through the wrong door at the wrong time. Some spiteful voices in the back of the joint or the back of my mind telling me I’m headed for hell and ain’t coming back. See, every day is a crossroad, and I happened upon the worst one yet.
I remember that flaking paint; grime-covered white on a moulding door **** near off its hinges. That suited me, and I hated it. Maybe I grew sick of wandering the same way and turned my life on its spinning head. Spun me all the ways I couldn’t face. Saw a glimmer that fate had readied for me. Don’t think I’ve looked at anything with such eyes since; nor have they looked back at me.
The room was a cramped, dilapidated hellhole like every other room, but with her laying on that bed of hers . . . she was the only clean thing in the whole of this cursed city. Save, she wasn’t clean. No such thing exists; no such thing as clean since your adolescent innocence, and even that went up in flames. Hell, in a city like this I wouldn’t be surprised if the skeletons we kept so tightly locked in our closets outnumbered us ten to one.
Should have remembered that when I saw her, but my mind lay a blank canvas and I couldn’t help but fill it with all the details of this pretty bird. Even those that weren’t there.
No Name yanked me out quick. Never seen him so pale, ghosting further and further from a human being. He’d been running so long I don’t think he even knew what he was running from anymore. His past? Some cop chase from years back, ending with blood stains and shaky hands? A dead kid in the arms of a suicidal wife? Maybe he’s running from himself. Fear in the capacity we contain, and fear in the ways we unleash it around loved ones. I don’t blame him for running. If I was a worse man I’d run from him as well.
Now No Name has it all figured out, even if he won’t let on; and that bird in there ain’t part of the plan. Cash cash, first train out to some no name city for this no name man. In this together, he keeps repeating, like some broke down record player that only plays one song. Well I guess we share more similarities than I’d like to think so.

One night, about a month after settling in that old apartment, I hear raised voices. Not uncommon, but something about this still night woke some fear inside me. A fear I needed to meet with my eyes, a score to settle with myself. Sounded like some ******* outside was hoping to bring down the sky with volume alone. No type of gentleman, just a no ***** kid who doesn’t know the difference between command and screaming like a babe.
One gets you respect. Now, the other. . . .
I open those stiff drapes with stiffer fingers. Brush that layer of frozen breath and mist to find some mid-twenty good for nothing punk holding a struggling figure. The apartment ain’t exactly ground floor but even up here I can spot the difference between a gent and a sally. Some broad was in trouble.
Grab that six shooter, old man. The holster smooth from years of wear, small frays on the weathered jacket rubbing against goose-pricked skin. Comfort clothing that never really brings comfort. Not anymore. Guess I’m as bad as No Name. I’m just repeating routine.
Out the hall, no doors left in this apartment block. Stolen, broken, ain’t exactly your family fun lifestyle we’re living. No Name’s holed up in this fortress of upturned furniture and dresser-barred doorways. Lights flicker from between the cracks. The devil ain’t gonna bother with the door, I tell him. He doesn’t reply. Maybe he’s a religious man with one too many sins above his head.
There’s another yell and I feel my blood rise, hairs picking up static, a storm brewing inside that clenched stomach of mine. Take a tumble down the stairs in my haste. **** crooked balsa wood. Those stairs are gonna end me one day, I swear.
Ground floor. I slam that kitchen door and it cracks against the brick wall outside. ****. No Name’s gonna burst an artery. Call out for that ******* punk but he’s already eyeing me up. Only a few steps away and I can see the white in his eyes. No . . . those are his pupils. Wide, all cloud-like, he’s ******* dusted up. . . . Almost like looking into the past. Thrice-cursed ****. I’m in trouble.
This ain’t some lover’s quarrel, some twisted ****’s thought of a good way to end the night. This is a dusthead addict and I’m out of my league. His mid-snarl distorts and stretches past his cheeks and that devil grin sends an electric jolt from the wires of my brain to my heart.
This six shooter is as good as a pea gun against a Smiley.
He’s spouting some glossolalia drifts, layering it like an abominable duet. The coked-up boy in me yearns to understand again, but stiff joints and washed-out dreams have made me a cynic. Ain’t no beauty when you’re tearing things apart to see it. ******* Smiley’s on the edge and he’s ready to pounce right off. If that broad’s sobbing didn’t **** at those heart strings of mine I’d be running for my ******* life.
I lift that pea shooter and aim it straight at that devil smile.
He howls. Glass shatters from above. Some black monstrous thing comes speeding at me. I leap through that apartment doorway in time to see ******* Smiley consumed by it. All sharp, all solid that beast slams into Smiley, screaming loud enough to wake this dead city twice over. Smiley thrashes, he splays out to the ground, the beast’s seared flesh erupting in front of me. A piece slices past my cheek and I’m on the ground in tears. I hear No Name scream an incomprehensible curse above. I’m bawling now. Through my tears I spot that chunk of flesh. ******* balsa wood. Thrice-cursed balsa wood.
No Name had thrown a piano out that barricaded window of his. Tears of pure comedy, that’s what left my face. A Smiley taken out by No Name, I’ll never live this down. His mangled body lies under polished wood. Someone’s yearly worth gone in a second of frantic panic, reduced to twisted wires and cracked ivory. To see something so beautiful destroyed in seconds makes me wonder if the Smiley had gotten the better of us after all.
That broad’s in shock. Splinters covered every inch of ground save that around her; looked like a comet, trailing emptiness behind.  Should have noticed it then that something wasn’t right with that scene. Perfectly unscathed beauty sitting there with not a single scratch nor splinter on her, but I was too **** amazed I was alive. Knelt close to her and caught a whiff of some exotic scent on her skin. Some flower. Saw her face and it added another colour to that filling canvas of mine. This pretty bird from the joint. The one men died for. At least No Name had saved one life worth saving, funny it happened to be the one who could take yours in a night.
Names elude me, but the way I remember her . . . the way I remember her is Blossom, for when she came into my life she gave colours to my black and white memory, colours I didn’t know existed, and my black and white morals took a turn down some dawning grey-blurred alley.
So I’m a ******* gentleman and I walk Blossom home while No Name shifts furniture above us. Scrapes of hard wood against wood, filling that void in his once impenetrable bastion. I told you No Name’s got it all planned out already. Guess I’m just here for the ride.

insecurity /ɪnsɪˈkjɔːrɪti/ is an uncertainty or anxiety
about oneself or lack of confidence

but insecurity is more than that.

insecurity is feeling like
you cannot wear the green shirt
because people would call you and it ugly.

insecurity is spending
an hour in the bathroom
to cover the spots from
cruel, laughing eyes.

insecurity is hiding
in the back of the classroom
with a shroud of mystery
to conceal the fear of
everyone laughing at
your answers.

insecurity is layering
yourself in conservative clothes
so the mockery
about your weight
is out of sight
out of the obnoxious gossipers mind.

insecurity is retiring
to a world of books
in the comfort of my room
since my peers cannot accept
me and my interests.

insecurity is allowing
only a small amount
of food, water, life
to shed the faces full
of ridicule.

insecurity is creating
a veil of sweaters and long-sleeved shirts
to hide the razor marks
of a haunting past.

insecurity is feeling shamed
of any uniqueness because
of the unnecessary attention
and inability to hide your shyness.

insecurity is sustaining
the weight of a burden
from the unfortunate
events of life
and the helplessness that
you couldn't stop the crash
that killed your parents.

insecurity is redesigning
yourself to be perfectly alligned
with society's expectations
making you forget
what makes you unique
so scornful looks are redirected.

insecurity is forgetting
that it's alright to be different
despite another person
saying otherwise.

can't i escape my insecurities?

The Ache is leaving. Three years languished by dead end jobs, drugs and friends. Last week above a bagel store, the sun morphs mute amidst travelling clouds, indifferent fluctuations of light on an otherwise featureless day.

You arrive a tight knot of anxieties over a moment in time that could only have arrived after its departure. The Ache welcomes you into their sparse interior. You trace last month’s 21st across the black mould complex; navigate piles of stacked boxes, unsure if anything is inside of them.

“I always make the best friends in departure,” the Ache says, flipping a plushy up and down by the waist.

“Maybe you can only love that which is already lost,” you reply, with an insight a friend will give you a week later.

The acid tastes bitter under your tongue. Small marks your body bursting, a glowing radiance of interconnections you’d always had but only now begun to feel. The Ache follows suit and you sit on the couch together to watch .hack//Legend of the Twilight. The come up entangles you in the spectacle; the screaming boy protagonist, the chipped tooth gag, the moe sister in need of saving from the liminal space of dead code. You take part in it; you revel in it. Bodies morph on the surface of the screen in hyperflat obscenity, their parts interchangeable to the affect of the drama. Faces invert, break and disfigure, before reformation into the self-same identity form.

A month earlier, you’d hosted a house show at your flat. Too anxious to perform you’d dropped a tab as you’ve done now. An overbearing sensation of too-much-ness — of sickening reality — washed through the nexus of your being. You writhed on the ground screaming into a microphone as a cacophony of sounds roiled through you. Everyone cheered.

The floor rose later that night. A damp, disgusting intensity that triggered contractions in your throat and chest. Pulled to the ground, you fought off your bandmate’s advances, too shocked to express your revulsion and horror, to react accordingly, to reconstitute a border of consensual sociality. You broke free and slurred “I’m no one’s! I’m no one’s!” before running out of the room. Hours later, you tried to comfort them. Weeks later, you realised how ******* ******* that had been. Months later, you learnt their friend had committed suicide days before the show.

Back in the lounge, a prince rides onto the screen on a pig. You turn to the Ache and say “This is ******* awful.”

The Ache responds “I know right?”

Outside the world burns blue with lustre. The Ache trails you and falls onto their stomach. “Oh my god,” the Ache blurts, “this is why I love acid. Everything just feels right.” They gaze wistfully at the grasses and flowers before them; catch a whiff of asphalt and nectar, intermingled. “Like, gender isn’t even a thing, you know? Just properties condensed into a legible sign to be disciplined by heteronormative governmentality.”

“Properties! Properties!” You chant, stomping around the Ache with your arms stretched out. You wave them in the air like windmills. You bare your teeth. “Properties! Properties!”

“You know what I mean, right?” The Ache asks, pointedly. “You know what I mean?”

You continue chanting “Properties!” for another minute or two, before spotting a slug on a blade of grass beneath your feet. You fall to your knees and gasp “It’s a slug!”

You and the Ache stare at the tiny referent for an indefinite period of time, absorbed in its glistening moistures. Eventually, the Ache says “I think it’s actually a snail.”

You used to read postmodern novels on acid. You loved their exploration of hyperreality; their dissection of culture as a system of meaning that arises out of our collective, desperate attempts to overcome the indifference of facticity. Read symptomatically, culture does not reveal unseen depths in the world, but rather, constitutes shallow networks of sprawling complexity — truth effects — illusions of mastery over an, otherwise, undifferentiated and senseless becoming.

Then one day, the world overwhelmed you. Down the hall, your flatmates sounded an eternal return. As they spoke in joyous abandon you traced the lines from their mouths — found their origin in idiot artefacts of Hollywood Babylon. The joy of abstraction you once relished in your books took on an all too direct horror. You recoiled. You bound your lips in hysteria, for fear of becoming another repeating machine of an all too present culture industry. Better dumb than banal — better to say nothing at all, than everything that already was and would ever be. You cried and cried until everyone left — until you were alone with your silence and your tears and your nonexistent originality.

Dusk falls in violet streaks. You reach your room on the second floor of the building, open the bedside window and stick your legs out into a cool breeze. The Ache joins you. Danny Burton, the local MP, arrives in his van, his smiling bald face plastered on its side like an uncanny double enclosing its original.

“Hey look, it’s Danny Burton, the local MP.” Danny Burton turns his head. He glares at your dangling feet for a few seconds before entering his house. “You know, this is the first time in three years he’s looked at me and it’s at the peak of my degeneracy.” You turn to the Ache. “One of my favourite past times is watching him wander around the house at night, ******* and unsure of himself. He always goes to check on his BBQ.” You bounce on the bed in mania.

“See this is what people do, right?” the Ache says, mirroring your excitement. “Like, look at that lady walking her dog.” The Ache motions, with a cruel glint in their eyes, to the passerby on the fast dimming street. “What do you think she gets out of that? Doing that every night?” Without waiting for you to respond, the Ache answers, in a low, sarcastic tone “I guess she gets enjoyment. Doing her thing. Like everyone else.” The lady and the dog disappear beyond the curve of the road. Another pair soon arrives, taking the same path as the one before.

A few months back, you’d met an old friend at an exhibition on intersectional feminism. After the perfunctory art, wine and grapes, she drove you home, back to your run down flat in an otherwise bourgeois neighbourhood. She sat silent as the sun set before the dashboard, then asked how anyone could live like this; how anyone could stand driving out of their perfect suburban home, at the same time every morning, to work the same shift every day, for the rest of their stupid life. The dull ache of routine; the slow, boring death. You said nothing. You said nothing because you agreed with her.

“Life began as self-replicating information molecules,” you reply, obliquely. “Catalysis on superheated clay pockets. Repetition out of an attempt to bind the excess of radiant light.”

It is dark now; a formless hollow, pitted with harsh yellow lamps of varying, distant sizes. The Ache flips onto their stomach and scoffs “What’s that? We’re all in this pointless repetition together?”

You respond, cautiously “I just don’t think that being smart is any better than being stupid; that our disavowed repetitions are any worthier than anyone else’s.”

The Ache returns your gaze with an intensity you’ve never seen before. “Did I say being smart was any better? Did I say that? Being smart is part of the issue. There is no trajectory that doesn’t become a habitual refrain. When you can do anything, everything becomes rote, effortless and pointless.

“But don’t act as if there’s no difference between us and these ******* idiots,” the Ache spits, motioning into the blackness beyond your frame. “I knew this one guy, this complete and utter ****. We went to a café, and he wouldn’t stop talking about the waitress, about how hot she was, how he wanted to **** her, while she was in earshot, because, I don’t know, he thought that would get him laid.

“Then we went for a drive and he failed a ******* u-turn. He just drove back and forth, over and again. A dead, automatic weight. A car came from the other lane, towards us, and waited for him to finish, but he stopped in the middle of the street and started yelling, saying **** like, ‘what does this ******* want?’ He got out of his car, out of his idiot u-turn, and tried to start a fight with the other driver — you know, the one who’d waited silently for him to finish.”

You don’t attempt a rebuttal; you don’t want to negate the Ache’s experience. Instead, you ask “Why were you hanging out with this guy in the first place?”

The Ache responds “Because I was alone, and I was lonely, and I had no one else.”

It is 2AM. Moths dance chaotic across the invisible precipice of your bedside window, between the inner and outer spaces of linguistic designation. There is a layering of history here — of affects and functions that have blurred beyond recognition — discoloured, muted, absented.

In the hollow of your bed, the Ache laughs. You don’t dare close the distance. Sometimes you find the edges of their impact and trace your own death. All your worries manifest without content. All form and waver and empty expanse where you drink deeply without a head. Because you have lost so much time already. And nothing keeps.

Months later, after the Ache has left, you will go to the beach. You will see the roiling waves beneath crash into the rocky shore of the esplanade, a violence that merges formlessly into a still, motionless horizon, for they are two and the same. You will be unable to put into words how it feels to know that such a line of calm exists out of the pull and push of endless change, that it has existed long before your birth and will exist long after your death.

The last lingering traces of acid flee your skin. Doused in tomorrow’s stupor, you close your eyes. You catch no sleep.

Think of an imagined orchestra. But there is no resonance hereabouts, so the imagination gives next to nothing for your efforts, and even in surround-sound there’s so little to reflect the dimensions of the space your walking inhabits. Sea hardly counts, having its constant companionship with wind, and sand hills absorb the footfall. A shout dies here before the breath has left the lungs.

Listen, there is a vague twittering of wading birds flocked far out on the sand. The sea rolls and breaks a rhythmic swell into surf. There’s a little wind to rustle the ammophila and only the slight undefined noise of our bodies moving in this strip between land and sea. Nowhere here can sound be enclosed except within the self. There’s a kind of breathing going on, and much like our own, it has to be listened for with a keen attention.

There is such a confusion of shapes making detail difficult to gather in, even to focus upon, and to attempt an imagined orchestration – impossible. We’ll have to wait for the camera’s catch, its cargo to be brought to the back-lit screen. Once there it seems hardly a glimmer of what we thought we saw, what we ‘snapped’ in an instant. It’s too detached, too flat. So thankfully you sketch, and I feel the pen draw shapes into your fingers and their moving, willing hand. On your sketchbook’s page the image breathes and lives.

You can’t sketch music this way because the mark made buries itself in a network that seems to defy with its complexity any image set before you. Time’s like that. You end up with a long low pitch, pulsating; a grumbling sound rich in sliding harmonics. You see, landscape does not beget melody or even structure and form, only tiny, pebbled pockets of random sound. Here, there is no belonging of music. Only the built space can adequately house music’s home. We might ****** a few seconds of the sea’s turn and wash, a bird’s cry, the rub and clatter of boot on stone, and later bring it back to a timeline of digital audio and be ‘musical’ with it, or not.

Where we hold music to landscape is something we are told just happens to be so; it is the interpretation’s (and the interpreter’s) will and whim. It is an illusion. The Lark Ascends in a Norfolk field. We hear, but rarely see, this almost stationary bird high in the morning air. We can only imagine the lark’s eye view, but we know the story, the poem, the context, so our imagination learns to supply the rest.

What is taken then to be taken back? On this November beach, on this mild, windless afternoon,. Am I collecting, preparing, and easing the mind, un-complicating mental space, or unravelling past thoughts and former plans? I can then imagine sitting at a table, a table before a window, a window before a garden, and beyond the garden (through the window) there’s a distant vista of the sea where the sun glistens (it is early morning), and there too in the bright sky remains a vestige of a night’s drama of clouds. But today we shall not put music to picture from a camera’s contents, from any flat and lifeless image.

Instead there seem to be present thoughts alive in this ancient coastline, abandoned here the necessary industry of living, the once ceaseless business of daily life. Instead of the hand to mouth existence governed by the herring, the course strip farming below the castle, the herds of dark cattle, the possible pigs, some wandering sheep, seabirds and their eggs for the ***, the gathering of seaweed, the foraging for fuel: there is a closing down for winter because the visitors are few. We need the rest they say, to regroup, paint the ceilings, freshen up the shop, strengthen the fences, have time away from the relentlessness of accommodating and being accommodating. Only the smell of smoking the herring remains from the distant past – but now such kippering is for Fortnums.

We step out across and down and up the coastal strip: an afternoon and its following morning;  a few miles walking, nothing serious, but moving here and there, taking it in, as much as we can. We fill ourselves to the brim with what’s here and now. The past is never far away: in just living memory there was a subsistence life of the herring fishers and the itinerant fisher folk who followed the herring from Aberdeen to Plymouth. Now there are empty holiday lets, retirement properties and most who live here service the visitors. Prime cattle graze, birds are reserved, caravans park next to a floodlit hotel and its gourmet restaurant. There’s even a poet here somewhere - sitting on a rock like a siren with a lovely smile.

Colours: dull greens now, wind-washed-out browns, out and above the sea confusions of grey and black stone, floating skeins of orange sands and the haunting, restless skies. Far distant into the west hills are sculpted by low-flying clouds resting in the mild air. Wind turbines step out across the middle distance, but today their sails are stationary. As the bay curves a settlement of wooden huts, painted chalets then the grey steep roofed houses of stone, grey and hard against the sea.

Does music come out of all this? What appears? What sounds? What is sounding in me? There is nothing stationary here to hang on to because even on this mild day there is constant change. Look up, around, adjust the viewpoint. There’s another highlight from the sky’s palette reflecting in the estuary water, always too various and complex to remember.

Music comes out of nothing but what you build it upon. It holds the potential for going beyond arrangements of notes. Pieces become buildings, layers in thought. My only landscape music to date begins with a formal processional, a march, and a gradually broadening out of tonality the close-knit chromatic to the open-eared pentatonic. There’s a steady stream of pitches that do not repeat or recur or return on themselves, as so much music needs to do to appease our memory.

In this landscape there seem only sharp points of dissonance. I hear lonely, disembodied pitches, uncomfortable sounds that are pinned to the past. The land, its topography as a score grasping the exterior, lies in multi-dimensional space, sound in being, a joining of points where there is no correlation. There’s a map and directions and a flow of time: it starts here and ends there, and so little remains for the memory.

Yet, this location remains. We walked it and saw it fortunately for a brief time in an uninhabited state. We were alone with it. We looked at this land as it meets the sea, and I saw it as a map on which to place complexes of sound, intensities even,. But how to meet the musical utterance that claims connection? It is a layering of complexes between silences, between the steady step, the stop and view. There is perhaps a hierarchy of landscape objects: the curve of the bay, the sandhills’ sweep, the layerings of sand, and in the pools and channels of this slight river that divides this beach flocks of birds.

Music is such an intense structure, so bound together, invested with proportions so exact and yet weighed down by tone, the sounding, vibrating string, the column of air broken by the valve and key, the attack and release of the hammered string. But there is also the voice, and voices are able to sound and carry their own resonance . . .

. . . and he realised that was where these long drawn out thoughts, this short diary of reflection, had been leading. He would sit quietly in contemplation of it all and work towards a web of words. He would let their rhythms and sounds come together in a map, as a map of their precious, shared time moving between the land and the sea, the sea and the land.

Leave it to 2015 to transform the slip dress into, well, something other than a slip dress. No longer was the slinky, curve-skimming frock the evening-only pinnacle of sensuality; instead, it found its footing as a functional layering piece. It was worn on top of T-shirts, under sweatshirts, and over pants. And it wasn’t just the runway that inspired the nouveau way of wearing the piece: Everyone from Orthodox Jewish women to Rihanna put their spin on it. Here, see the best ways the slip dress was worn in 2015—and the cues to take when you sport it post–New Year.

Try an Orthodox Line of Thought

Turns out it was a Brooklyn enclave who managed to make the sexiest trend of the year—the slip dress—the chicest. And no, it wasn’t Williamsburg hipsters. So how to master modest layering like the Orthodox? Try a men’s blazer over the silk number, adding sleeves, or extending the neckline.

When in Doubt: What Would Kate Moss Do?

Feeling cold this winter? Make like Moss and combine the best of two worlds: The cozy turtleneck and the body-clinging slip dress. The simple pairing is the peak of insouciance—while keeping you warm.

Grunge Goddesses Still Rock

With the addition of a stoner-style hoodie, the slip dress got a major dose of grunge-forward flair. On the Vetements Spring 2016 runway, a hunter green hoodie thrown over a lavender slip dress gave an instant too-cool-for-school effect, while Ursina Gysi turned heads in an orange lace–trimmed swath of silk and a blue oversize pullover on the street during Fashion Week.

Rihanna Put a Bad Gal Spin on Hers

First, she took the hoodie and slip dress trend and gave it a go on the street. Next, she threw on a pair of sky-high cuissardes to pair with a short, baby-pink number. Then Ri-Ri topped a shimmering bronze slip with a baseball hat! Whatever the move, the singer deserves major credit for giving the ’90s throwback a modern bite.

And About the ’90s . . .

The revamp of the ’90s on the runway also brought back memories of a very throwback way to wear the slip dress: Seen on Spring 2016 runways fromCourrèges to Emilio Pucci, the boudoir staple was layered over a long-sleeved shirt or a simple tee to counter the sexiness of the slip and cut the sweetness.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-sydney

I can’t help but wonder if we have crossed paths
Over and over again, tangling each hello
Catching a hint of mischief when we first bumped into each other
And how easy it was for us to slip into
Conversations, plotting to take on the world
But first things first, we have to catch the moon
And hold the stars ransom in our back pockets
I swear we were pirates singing sea shanties
And conquering cities, but now we settle
For late night dance parties, and one shot, two shot, three
And sure, we are invincible, and I can’t help but wonder
If we have crossed paths over and over again
Our stories layering, life long friends
Or maybe arch nemeses, and each time
Tagging out a new adventure
Where we are chasing after each other
I swear we were renegades, young rebels
Questioning authority and pushing boundaries
Now, we collaborate artistically
Broadcasting in a world of social media, one shout, two shout, three
And sure, we are strong, and I can’t help but wonder
If we have crossed paths over and over again
Our history repeating, kindred spirits
Or maybe pieces of the same soul, and each time
We meet, we find a part of ourselves
We had forgotten

Her fourteen days $?..........&

And what? And I am losing
some attachments
And____
is this our way
We should say is this my end today
My salvation
(Losing) wed long train
of thought
(Religion)

One day before
She screams!!
Such finesse of refinement
We all fall down 
Like children
of the **** torment
Statues the transformation
so real
Carve the deal on the 13th

Like the Gal Friday
battle Tut
masked out the
Halloween taking
out their spleen

Statuette Tut of
the jurisdiction
The fourteen karat teen
gold doesn't put a hold on me

How our minds
became off-set

My blocks are the key
to his heart mindset
The trade of the marks
her freedom
Her lips
quite a
surgery can blow
those bricks
down like a bullet

How it out knocks singing
over again
we all fall down
like ashes remain

Oh! Gee  V for Victorious Glee

How he couldn't pass
this
opportunity
deliciousness,
divineness
because of me,
there I went to the silent hill
The tranquil of quietness
Her weapon
the bullet dress - --
The coffee in the
King Tut shape
The curvy glass

Like a desert storm fires
Going First class

Not a block party second in mind
          "He" King Glee
Behind her walls, he reconstructs
Cheers of joy bullets one of a kind
Like a setup ploy
Her body fine weight
of gold
Eyes almond he's my candy
Second chances of joy
Her third timeless so hot
Is "She"
He's trying to nourish her heart

"With Glee"

Those love instructions
Like a bullet for me?

The King Oh! Gee

The Queen you
had to see
Like the golf clubs to putter set
The ball whole cup
The whole process stayed put
She was so enticed by his
bungee climbing
Seeing his first shot shooting
wasn't a star

The bricks to the end of the war
Judy the Star was Garland found
a different  time of Era la boom
reborn lady Liza Minnelli

The Empire of the Tut
(Bali Island Hut)
Her best to the
last stone paver layers
Like a Tut mortal dreamers
On her deck Golden Egg cards
King on top of the Queen
blocks bam the bomb ticks
The Joker having his last laugh
The war of fidelity like a plaque
of immortals
"And Please God' let it be over

You're my lucky star
No matter where you are
The ancient portal sip of wine
"All Glee" smile to trust
Come attached with loads of funds
His attache case modernly- eyes dim
Cashed into her twilight blank stare
Head over heels digging underneath her
gold - heavy heart and mind spins
into a migraine

His prayers are working
constructing a force
Something is emerging
racing for hearts
Engaging the space of valuable
objects of time

  We heard of the
one-day creation
the mysterious temple
Kinksters my heroes our fellowman
To the hipbone, those hipsters stick
  together to hustle

She is trying harder to please him
The gold to be seized
Thousand times over
to build
a form of loves the golden touch

The building could collapse
Heart together can relapse
If her love doesn't stand tall
The darkness can come to her eyes
The death of cards handed
like her corpse flying bullets

Such a massive stone block
She loved to be entertained
Let me make you walk my path
Solid as a rock

Like the Sun Gods map like the
Egyptian cat tongue
The strange pharaohs ancient
stolen identity
Layers and layers
Trumpet tower Presidential
Her bullet racer tulips
Lips bloom with gravity
900 feet getting a grip confidential

The ruins the strange existence
every time will there be next time
The new technology reveals
more secrets one bullet at a time
A silver bullet doesn't
compare to her myths Antionette


Her Anniversary all in gold,
to be or not to be
The silver award bullets
His mighty treasure
for poems of the sonnet

The largest space to build
in Egypt
Look up its a plane
King Tut bird
Super bullet giant beams
Going once or twice
70 Ladybird feet
Pharaoh timeline
so many wives

The column layering
checkerboard
She the sweeter cake
Had life sliced itself

Her layers the feed
of his smorgasbord
The name Ramesses 11
To reveal the evidence
stolen identities this
wasn't the (Providence)
Laying bricks in
my stone bed
Like a heart of stone

Building a gold his
mind like a block-freeze
It will take lifetimes
Marlon "Brando"
The commando of the waterfront
try to be upfront
It felt like a hard cement

Two bricks intellectual speaking
The goldrush her heart racing the
bullet of time
So thick-headed 
The Queen just sit
beheaded

The golden bond have
  guns will travel I Glee I pads
  The speed of bullets meet
my heroes what lads
The kingdom was
holding women
Joy to the
tacky glue magnet

Not the carnival of
cotton candy soft gold
The King got his ladies like
The Funhouse King Tut
no detention to have
Like the speed of lightning
never to hold
More love to build intermission
The kings only private
Gold VIP Theatre

All smiles the build-up
   Another mysterious setup palace
Those bricks of brown
warmth orange-reds of fire leaves
Falling over her milestone of
Mink hair
the fairytale of
Rumpelstiltskin
 Are we in to know
  what really clicks

More layer and layers of her
goldilocks of hair 
 stronger than any bricks

Artificial means and memes the fingers perusing naturally formed hide and go seek
Chic creatures wrought from nanoparticles based on modeled consciousness neural networks
A handsome hivemind of bee;s building trees from cds ...intersynth polygons attracted
to stack platonic forms emanation waves alpha beta delta gamma omega 1 , 2 ,3
this multiversal layering from micro to macro of matter animated by its intoned
hertz pulsations and the interferrence pattern of the changing relationship due to the amount, frequency,  force, temperature , texture , text messages, timing , geometry , subharmonics and overtones,  a jewel net . syncronistic synergetic, synaptical sparkles.

She accidentally looked back into eternity and it is telling her things. Constantly questioning whether it could have been on purpose. She wishes it had told her about the day that she went missing for too long. She is still missing. Missing so many things that happen and those as close as possible. She is missing them too.

She existed to be this close to missing everyone forever. Everyone missing her forever. Missing her orange kisses and purple thoughts. He left messages in blue in her thoughts. To see if it could make a shady spot in the bright yellow sun.  This is where they would sit and possibly lay down. There were so many shimmering waves in the grass that loose clothing rippled. Her dress was waving to clouds being emptied by the sunshine.

If they were to lay in bent grass blades could it be the last time. The last time the blades bent back and the feeling of beauty penetrating hearts couldn’t let go. The last thing they could ever want. No turning back. Time is bending the blanket.

Time decided to take some space to itself. To get back to nature and living with things we cannot stop. Life kept being left in the street with holes made in it by fear and hatred that is white. Life kept being told by whiteness that is was not real.

In this space that time took to itself the institution of white needed to become colorful like rainbows and hadn’t documented in its constitution that it needs to become different shapes and sounds that may be hard for it to resonate with while investing in such militant social systems of oppression overflowed from slavery in order to become a space other than time allows for a short duration yet brutally eternal and ending now as today unfolds and life proves it is real as time rips it apart openly and its institution of white judges itself into the panic of being so insensitive that vengeance has no other shapes, colors or sounds to choose other than violet revolt.

Violet made handprints in clay as a small child while reserving words for family that were taken from her. She smiled into the abyss of pleading that is too late for forgiveness. A silence of the white institution that could no longer be a burden in space for time to want anything to do with it ever again. Violet was intimate with the space that time took to itself. She nourished it with colors, intelligence, senses, shapes, love, merciless unforgiving power and purple thoughts were always encouraged.

Violet’s orange kisses burned into the early morning making the institution of whiteness a kind of blue. All that was left of it was confused and squinting at the colors of its new shape. It was demanding to know how long the spell had been on them and what to do now. Violent explained in senses and climate changing shapes of darkness and bright red lava and flashing pink clouds that there is no now.

part 2

I hope you like my shape of communication. I hope you can appreciate the brutality of the beauty in decomposing the unnecessary manifestation of apocalypse. The writer wants you to know its him. The narrator wants you to know its her. The sentence is time taking space to itself. Grammar is more of a blue than purple. The shape is the sense of confusion which is also the ****** of realizing eternity. The details are up to your imagination not mine or the author or writer or {[(black/white)[(black women/white women) + during slavery and after] + (Americans) (to make the *** trade of slavery possible) (political intellectually engineered institution)] [(mixed race) (native)(black African) (the rest of the world not isolating themselves in the social construction of whiteness)]} = having to create my own language because I don’t exist like I need to in the institution of whiteness (I have to feel it more than it feels me) that has a completely different meaning and purpose of imagined structure or patterns or symbols that outnumbers mathematics that are statistical boundaries invested in with the language that power is behind it somewhere that can only be found by using it.

Its uncomfortable for me to write the things I feel without feeling the need to prove their value to you. To build a relationship and undo it before we get to comfortable with each other. I know that you will never forget this during all your desperate imagination of reading and life. A thread that is undeniable through shapes colors and sounds but grammarless rhythm with more sensual texture than colonial organization and its friend decolonization making love instead of war most of the time.

So this again is why time has taken space to itself. The shapes of objectification in our solar system layering our consciousness with objectifying existence in space unimaginably vast and then gone all of the sudden. Actually assumptions are our specialty so we are intimate with them and emotive beyond anything real.

Vibrations sound like waves and look like shapes. She surfed on the shape of waves. She lives on the shape of waves balancing them with focus and intent. Of course she is going to use the most obscene language of the oppressor to react and demand the same brutal trauma is being redirected by her with exponential adaptivity as aggressively as colonialism on the institution of whiteness that changes little details of its shape to suit its foundation as the need for free labor based on her skin color and also the genes of her skin color to by association allow enslavement of light skin hims.  

Section 3

The flowers sat at the drum set to communicate spring. Some felt uncomfortable and decided to advocate for the drums.

“The drums are symbolic not just the symbols. Why should the symbols get the credit as being symbolic?”

As a gesture of listening, acceptance, and understanding. Guns turned to hyacinth flowers with jasmine bullets. The fragrance took violence over with a brutal ferociousness no one knew flowers had.

That same sunny day I became 6 shades darker in the growing power of the sun. That morning the same perspectives of my identity changed twice. In the morning the institution of whiteness (IOW) declared a false sense of solidarity with how I looked to them. That evening they ignored me like that never happened. They were squinting with confusion and nodding at each other.

The IOW was making a habit out of black identity. Settling with the concept that being black is having holes from their police and being silenced on streets or in the passenger seats of cars with their families. The IOW was making it a custom to advertise being black as dying.

A Rwandan orchid blossomed right at that moment. The IOW abruptly spit out their coffee and stood up together in disbelief. The sheer unexpected beauty became an unbearable pressure on their hearts.

The heart? Since this Orchid blossomed the shape of the IOS did not allow anyone but themselves to have a heart. This realization that the others had hearts was a serious need for a group huddle.

“These others with hearts we must assimilate with them as soon as possible!”

It might have been the deep fragrance of hyacinth and Jasmine, she thought aloud, or maybe the purple thoughts, but then again Violet played a huge part in paving the way for the blossoming Orchid. Cushioned by bent grass blades and a timeless blanket they intertwined in the shade of the bright yellow sun.

Trusting steady for flower petals floating on moonlit beams.
Fractured cracks running into sewn seams of honey-colored threads.

Layering sunlight of emotions,
Rip-tide oceans hold your boulder heart open.
Velvety warm blankets shimmering with lavender energy,
Of a silence unspoken.

A roar within of a constant fiery flame.
A warrior armored with stars and an army of willowy trees.

Song buds upon lip, striking a symphonic flowery melody.
Eyes sparkling, you captivate with an alluring smile.

Flowers intertwined within your raven locks.
Summer night of fireflies and dancing bees,
Forgiveness never a weakling of knees.

Soft spoken heart beats.
Sun-fire but shaded with purpling blues.
Steadying hands even though your lips may frown.

Ever present is the sleepy shadow of a sugared temptation,
That only the befallen will know.
A darkness muddled into the after-hours of dawn.
Self-pity wars that your feet danced into nothing, no more.
You let the colors become vibrant yellows, even greens.

A warrior surrounded by atmospheres of light,
Tinged with the milky blue hue of night.
Oceans come and gone but forever in your heart is song.

It was 29° (f) degrees this morning with a waning gibbous (¾) moon. Still, as we started our run, it was dark enough that the world was rendered in black and white. Lisa was a sepia print of herself while Charles was a large, quiet shadow, a dark visual noise pattern.

We usually jog from our dorm, down to and along New Haven Harbor and back. Lisa and I love the ocean. The wind was in our faces this morning and there were no sparkling moon refractions in our direction, which made the water musou and colorless.

I’ve gotten my outfit down to a science, leggings under shorts, four long sleeve, dry-wicking spandex tops (layering is important), a power-wool-earflap-beanie, thermal neck gaiter and quantum, icebreaker gloves (with touch-screen compatibility) - you gotta dress warmly but be able to shed layers as needed.

I listen to audiobooks while we run. Right now I’m on book 5 of the ‘The Expanse’ series. I don’t have time to read anything fun these days, so I listen to science-fiction/fantasy while I workout. I love the new AirPod Pro feature that automatically turns the sound down if anyone talks.

I wear a fitbit charge around my right ankle and my Apple watch as well - they both track my run - the fitbit is more accurate but my watch sends my workout stats to my siblings - we’re uhh, sort of competitive.

At first, as we came up on the harbor, it was impossible to see the intersection of the two dark oceans - the great terrestrial and the greater galactic - but as we turned for home, there was an atmospheric scatter of blue at the edge of the horizon, heralding the sunrise on our retreating backs.

musou = one of the darkest shades of black

stepping back into the west
chills reverberate up and down my spine
chiseling open obsolescent padlocks
dangling with dust
on ancient treasure chests

pallid colors in the attic release
a blossoming familiarity
faint hints of retrospections float on faded paper
granting me access to roads
where no map is needed

as i peruse the streets
my heart flows coalescing with the vicinity
caressing each detail i transform to fluid
and fuse with the past
through fresh strokes of watercolored memories

recollections flash before my eyes
revealing antiquated stories
though thought forgotten
an etched history endeavors to define me
renewing itself as i turn each corner

i shudder at some remembrances while encompassing others
through synchronicity realization hits
that I am all of it
yet none of it
at the same time

familiar faces paint meaning onto me
no longer do they know me
yet they airbrush vestiges of yesteryear
and coat me with connotations
i allow them to think i am whatever they imagine

i morph into their canvas temporarily
then break free in multi-dimensionality
they don't hear me with a new listening
no longer invested in their projections
once sharp triggers now appear in soft focus

an auspicious mist lies around the edges
of my former life
it is as if i never left
yet traces of the east lie sandpapered in me
a maturation commingles with my former self

flushing out on my skin
tethering newfound emotions
a gentle gratitude for home territory
nestles softly
inward

i listen to the clicks
of my scuffed cowboy boots
on acquainted yet somehow distant sidewalks
the echoes layering multiple impressions
glimmering with the utter beauty of this terrain

as I wander through the majestic rocky mountains
drinking in the quaking aspen's crimson edges
interfacing the evergreens
hushed whispers of autumn loftily rest
juxtaposed neatly against futures waiting to unfurl in the wind

an amalgamation of intimate sights and scents
dance in open wounds
dazzling
homesickness cured
a wholeness returned

as winter's crystal dawn blooms
i realize the depth of my growth
for in leaving here and returning
i cherish the west
my home

©2016 janetaylor

Violets fell
from your mouth, smoke
in purple filaments
Your laughter spills from
frozen tongues
you are
 
you are
 
you are
 
a thousand words
in a silent room
echoing from
my naked mouth,
the folds layering
in my mind:
 
red and blossomed nectar
filling the hollows
of my ears.

Like noble, wooden soldiers
Are the lovely autumn trees
How I love those autumn trees!
How I love their brilliant leaves!

Not able to walk,
Not able to talk,
But those Autumn trees
Stand there,
Stoically,
Silently,
And they speak
And move just the same
I can hear their tale
In my heart,
In my soul,
For there within rings the message of
Rennaissance and renewal

They are rooted in place
Like guards of the land
Their grand colors,
As Autumn showers
Of fiery rain,
Yet harmless and peaceful
As the leaves descend
To the ground for their final destination
The earth now becomes
A patchwork quilt
From the release of Fall foliage

They truly are like royalty,
Adorned in fine fitting robes
That have been splashed with
Nature's paintbrush of  
Gold, scarlett and blazing orange,
A kaleidoscope of stylish colors
A dazzling tapestry to behold!

But they must now shed
Their Fall finery
In an ancient tradition
The cycle of the seasons
They've endured throughout the ages

Their leaves become as
Paper to the wind
Yet they shall not suffer loss,
For soon they shall be
Blanketed in glorious white,
Like a luxurious fur
To clothe them once again
In Winter's fashion

To endure all that the weather
Has to throw at them
The tempests, the droughts--
We humans can glean
The seeds of the wellspring of life
Harvested from these trees
These days of Autumn's reign,
That have reaped the seasons of growth
From Spring and Summer

Autumn helps to instruct me
To keep my eye out on the horizon,
Watching and waiting
For life has not adandoned us in this season
But will return to us all in Spring,
On that you can fully rely upon

The nature of the trees--
Harboring birds,
And other creatures,
Sheltering the land,
Is one of kindness
I never tire of their beauty,
Their majestic branches
That spread out in
Growing abundance,
Bearing life-sustaining fruit

After all their leaves
Have finally left them
They stand there,
Now naked and eerily haunting,
Like upside-down brooms
sweeping the endless skies
And we mortals, in turn,
Sweep and rake away
The remnants of their Fall spectacle
From the layering of the land

The children realize the Autumn gift
As their playful hearts gather up
The leaves to freely jump into
The cushioning piles,
Into the mounds of fading colors


Why do I love Fall so much?
With all those dark, cloudy days?
With the sun becoming scarce?

I love Fall so much
Because it reminds me of hope,
Of what will eventually grow once more,
Not just of the obvious loss of green leaves
I see the fragility of life,
And the strength of it, too,
As the leaves descend to the ground
Shrivel up into brown decay
And crunch beneath our feet

No, Fall is only a temporary moment
Of nature readying itself for slumber
It must make way for Winter
The grandfather of the year to come,
To replace these days of Autmn trees...
Where nothing can ever grow,
Where the land is now barren,
Where the ice and snow take over,
And survival is never taken for granted

But Winter shall make way for Spring,
Where the cold, hard, lifeless ground
Warms up to nurture the tender seeds
Of flowers that have withered and died
For it is a time for another chance
The land awakening to embrace life again

Without such seasons of life how do we
Dream of brand new beginnings?
We clearly see that life must succeed death
Nature is surely our teacher
If only we look for its lessons

The sun setting in the East
Sparkling silver lining spread
Across the edges of color
Layering the clementine sky
Creamy daisy,
Heating up to orange,
Then the red-hot center.
Cooled only by the expanse of salty spray
Allowing for the mellow shades of
Rosy pink cheeks
To flush the clouds,
Then shy away into a lavender
And sapphire night sky
The iridescent shimmering
Lunar bliss.

Amicable, the vibration,
Getting to the Eden.
Elements sanctify the hurt,
Bonded like super glue.
Educates the visualized future,
Symphonic orchestra at the concert.

Adjudicated, the sentiment,
Layering me luscious lucidity.
Evening the odds,
Fit for four hands.
Destiny decided to
Trade compassion and serenity.

Sincere, the revelation

Always and all ways.
Sorry is deeply sorry,
Even when mostly innocent.
Let me contribute to the

Symphonic orchestra at the concert.
Bond like super glue,
Cue my disclosure.

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

(Originally written 12/9/10
Revised 10/2/14)

Fashion Week - a way to look at the past, present, and future all in once place. Whenever I get to attend a fashion show, I try to be as present and in-the-moment as possible. With iPhones and Instagram, everyone tries to be the first person to post looks from the runway, and it's hard to sometimes not take a photo or video and just enjoy the beautiful creations in front of you. History repeats itself every few decades, so it's fun to see trends popping up in the designs. And obviously, it's hard not to get excited about the future season when attending a fashion show.

Seattle Fashion Week is back and better than ever - for the first time in 5 years, it came back to the 206 after much anticipation. While Seattle gets a bad rep for wearing leggings, goretex, and fleece all the time, everyone wore their most beautiful dresses on Saturday night. It was a night to remember, and I always feel so lucky that I get to attend these shows and support local designers, artists, and creators. Saturday was the finale of the 3 night event, and the night for custom couture. I spotted a few trends throughout the show that I'd like to share with you.

Neutrals

Of course black and white made an appearance, but we also saw a lot of gray, blush, ****, and tan.

Exquisite fabrics

Lace, tulle and sequins, oh my! Every piece was feminine, quirky, and oh so Seattle. Nothing felt too girly, too "done up", or too stuffy. Most of these pieces you could break up and wear day or night, or mix and match them with a leather jacket and some boots to add some edge.

Texture

Nothing down the runway was a plain silk dress. Whether it was hand-knit yarm, layering of fabrics, or covered in zippers, prints, or hints of leather, everything was appealing to the eye and put together in the most beautiful way. I love getting inspiration for how to put pieces together, or how to mix and match different fabrics and prints to make an outfit truly my own.

Unique

Each and every piece was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Each designer had their own individual take on their collection, and you could tell they put so much time, sweat, tears, and love into their designs.

A huge thank you to the designers for sharing their handwork and beautiful custom art with us - Karen Ashley Fashion, House of Halm by Maria Ham, Morifu, Julie Danforth Design, Erika Bond, Dream Dresses by P.M.N., Juleano, Justin Zachary Bartle, and Boulevard Magenta by Wendy Ohlendorf. I cannot wait for the next SFW event!Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/yellow-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses