I Am Ugly

I am ugly. My days, my thoughts, the ways they grow and the ways they don’t, are ugly.

Sometimes I have days where I wish it would just stay light. Days where I don’t want the night to come. I’m not sure whether it comes down to a fear of visibility or productivity, or neither, or both.

These days, these ugly days, usually coincide with the days by which I write to do lists and include at least two tasks that I’ve already completed. The kindest I would ever be to myself.

Sometimes I have days where I wish I could skip the light and burst straight into the solemn and cloaked nature of night. Stemming, I assume, from that same fear of visibility or productivity, or neither, or both.

These days usually coincide with the gay abandon of to-do lists, ugly or otherwise. Rather, I wait until it is an appropriate time to engage in nighttime activities (Jameson, cigarettes, poor judgment, false confidence).

Sometimes I don’t wait until it’s an appropriate time.

Instead, using a vague and poorly constructed rationale that I live in between timezones and hemispheres, I pour Jameson into my iced coffee and slip into the streets.

The thing about mixing coffee (morning) with whiskey (night) is that there is only a very short window by which both beverages are simultaneously appropriate. Somehow, I manage to gaze out of this short window for days on end. A window of inopportunity.

Sometimes I rejoice in how ugly and awkward my thoughts and actions are. They are unrehearsed and without an audience.

I read a passage the other day, I can’t remember whom it was by, but it inscribed how beauty is, in many ways, boring.  That even if it’s concept has changed over the ages, a beautiful thing must follow certain rules.

“A beautiful nose shouldn’t be longer than that or shorter than this,” and how, on the contrary, an ugly nose may be as long as Pinocchio’s or as big as the trunk of an elephant or as sharp as the beak of an eagle. And, so, ugliness is unpredictable; it offers an infinite range of possibilities.

My ugly thoughts and my ugly days offer an infinite range of possibilities. Mistakes, ideas, revelations, inopportunities, windows.

I guess what the author means, what I mean, is that beauty is finite and rigid – A beautiful day can be ruined by an ugly thing – whereas ugliness is infinite, like God.

Today my ugliness is evolving. Today my mind is seeping with life-boat analogies and still images of rain. It’s filled with reminders to drink more water and to consider falling in love again. Today I wandered coffee shops and diners, I wrote haikus and gave myself chills. Today, I am lonely but it’s ok. Today, I am ugly, but it is comforting and unlimited.

Today my ugliness is evolving. Everything is. I have changed and I will continue to. I mean, even the devil could change – he once was an angel and he could be evolving still.

Ugly Days by Kiriko