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From yesterday to Mars in 30 seconds

Yesterday it was, you thought it's time to go and put some dots.

30 years on your bucket list and 30 hours of a waiting list to fly out to the East.

30 days on and it  feels foreign faraway lands for you, still.. 

30 months later and still it all sounds Chinese.

Are you a guest, an intruder or just looking to change skin? 

Wearing a new mask and learning to play for the kill? Not you ?

You‘ve been told since you were a kid, you are such a gift. 

But you had to come far to mix with strangers and thought there’s no way back, 

you‘ve got to  stick to it and find true power within.

To move from yesterday to mars in 30 seconds sounds impossible. 

You risk your sanity, your life. You are part of the court, the royals play you 

for a fool coz you are still in yesterday feeling confused, 

You thought it's just a party, it won't hurt!

Playing the game of one rule; you are always the one to lose. But you are not alone.

You have your mates, you have a team ready to go, the swords to draw and dance 

the war around a square where time 

expands and shrinks back dense in 30 seconds. 

You didn’t back down and now you can see Mars in all its glory, polar ice, 

volcanos, deserts, dust and smoke, you are not a stranger any more. 

You’ve taken  on the fire for your eternal conquest and won!

 

 

 

 dp

 Fucking Luffy

Ok, so english is not my first language, but for some reason it’s my writing language. For the life of me 

I can’t understand why I can not find the words in my native one. I’ve tried and failed miserably, that is 

not to say that I’ve succeeded in this one, but I do feel more comfortable with it. It flows more naturally, 

my thoughts seem more coherent, more vibrant even, I can find the right words to describe images, 

feelings, ideas. Isn’t it funny, the mediums our brain chooses to process the world around us and the 

one within? 

It’s been hard, very hard for all of us the past few years, for a number of reasons I wouldn’t dare bore 

you with. 

We were kinda struggling on our own. We couldn’t find relief, katharsis. I’m old enough to be able

to deal with my shit, and smart enough to handle thoughts and feelings at the right time, but I was 

struggling too, the usual methods didn’t quite work, they were but a bandaid. There was no release. 

Then I made the weirdest choice ever. I started watching ‘One Piece’.

The idea was to empty my mind from everything, a feel good anime about pirates with a silly 

protagonist ticking every box of the tropes one would expect in something like that, or so I thought. 

It did start like that, it really did, but I found myself invested. Invested in his dream, in his persistence, 

in the way he viewed the world, in the relationships he cultivated along the way and their stories as 

well. In my mind it became more serious than advertised in the beginning and as the episodes went by 

I realised that it actually was. 

It wasn’t silly anymore, it was dealing with real life problems, serious as a judge. I saw my problems, 

my friends' problems, my community’s, people’s I didn’t know personally, ones’ I hadn’t even thought of. 

They were all there, narrated, escalating, being resolved one way or another and a protagonist never 

losing his focus on what he wanted no matter the obstacles, but always making time to fight for 

everyone else's rights and dreams. Never losing his positive outlook on life and the idea that anyone 

should follow their dreams without that meaning they would sacrifice their beliefs, morals, their soul. 

Different characters but in essence the same. A group of people chasing after their dreams, so 

completely different from each other, but somehow, magically, not only coexisting but thriving 

together, leaving space for each other to learn, make mistakes, grow on their own, but always a step 

behind to catch one another, need be. Antagonists that were sometimes mindless, but mostly 

the product of their environment and Luffy refusing to give up on them and offering them second 

and third and even more chances to change their tune, never ending them, just stopping them, talking 

to them again and again as if it wasn’t a waste of his time. 

Always with a smile. Always making things light and carefree, even in the most dire straits. Trusting 

the people around him by default, not worrying about lies or betrayals, expecting the best out of people 

regardless of what he has seen and heard about them, giving them the benefit of the doubt and hoping 

things would work out fine, and they usually do, never in the way one would think though. But it 

doesn’t deter him, it doesn’t make him jaded, no matter what happens to him. 

I smile everytime I see his smile, I laugh every time he acts silly which is pretty much always, I worry 

every time he gets himself and the others around him in trouble because he simply cares. But mostly 

I cry. I cry everytime things don’t go his way, everytime I learn things about his backstory or anyone’s 

back story. Because no one is the way they are for no reason, there is always something in their 

past no matter how big or small that drove them to be. Heroes, villains are human. Character traits, 

choices, actions, explained at some point. You understand, you might not agree, but you understand. 

So I get emotional, most of the time, even for things I never thought I would. If you had told me a year 

ago that I would be balling my eyes out for a freaking ship in a freaking anime, I would have thought 

you crazy. But I did, and it helped. I found release, a way to channel sadness, frustration and worry, 

a reason to cry about without it being the actual reason. It helped process feelings of loss, it helped 

with feelings of injustice and how unfair the world can be. It helped understand different points of view 

and think about how the ones in front of me have a story of their own and even though I may not know 

what that is, it is still there, defining them, shaping them, and sometimes excusing them. 

It is nothing but freedom that emerges from each and every one episode I watch. Freedom of making 

one’s own choices, freedom of chasing one’s dream, freedom to be oneself unapologetically, freedom 

of speech, freedom of having the right to be considered, seen and understood with all of one’s 

baggage. The right to be part of this world in one’s own way. Freedom to feel what you feel and time 

to realise what that really means to you and for everyone else in your life. 

So I keep on watching, hoping it doesn’t end, hoping that the stories to come have the same if not 

a bigger impact, waiting for the next arc, the next antagonist and the moment that Luffy (or me, or you) 

triumphs over everything. I really don’t care what the one piece is, because, for me, 

it is one piece of me.