great love story - pah.

i don't believe in people sacrificing for love anymore.
the great love story is dead, never existed.

The Lady of Shalott

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And thro' the field the road runs by

To many-tower'd Camelot;

And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Thro' the wave that runs for ever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers,

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle inbowers

The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil'd,

Slide the heavy barges trail'd

By slow horses; and unhail'd

The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd

Skimming down to Camelot:

But who hath seen her wave her hand?

Or at the casement seen her stand?

Or is she known in all the land,

The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early

In among the bearded barley,

Hear a song that echoes cheerly

From the river winding clearly,

Down to tower'd Camelot:

And by the moon the reaper weary,

Piling sheaves in uplands airy,

Listening, whispers "Tis the fairy

Lady of Shalott."

There she weaves by night and day

A magic web with colours gay.

She has heard a whisper say,

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,

And so she weaveth steadily,

And little other care hath she,

The Lady of Shalott.

And moving thro' a mirror clear

That hangs before her all the year,

Shadows of the world appear.

There she sees the highway near

Winding down to Camelot:

There the river eddy whirls,

And there the surly village-churls,

And the red cloaks of market girls,

Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

An abbot on an ambling pad,

Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,

Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,

Goes by to tower'd Camelot:

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue

The knights come riding two and two:

She hath no loyal knight and true,

The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror's magic sights,

For often thro' the silent nights

A funeral, with plumes and lights

And music, went to Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead,

Came two young lovers lately wed:

"I am half sick of shadows," said

The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,

He rode between the barley-sheaves.

The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,

And flamed upon the brazen greaves

Of bold Sir Lancelot.

A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd

To a lady in his shield,

That sparkled on the yellow field,

Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,

Like to some branch of stars we see

Hung in the golden Galaxy.

The bridle bells rang merrily

As he rode down to Camelot.

And from his blazon'd baldric slung

A mighty silver bugle hung,

And as he rode his armour rung,

Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather

Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,

The helmet and the helmet-feather

Burn'd like one burning flame together,

As he rode down to Camelot.

And often thro' the purple night,

Below the starry clusters bright,

Some bearded meteor, trailing light,

Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;

On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;

From underneath his helmet flow'd

His coal-black curls as on he rode,

As he rode down to Camelot.

From the bank and from the river

He flash'd into the crystal mirror,

"Tirra, lirra," by the river

Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,

She made three paces thro' the room,

She saw the water-lily bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,

She look'd down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack'd from side to side;

"The curse is come upon me," cried

The Lady of Shalott.

In the stormy east-wind straining,

The pale yellow woods were waning,

The broad stream in his barks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining

Over tower'd Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat

Beneath a willow left afloat,

And round about the prow she wrote

The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse

Like some bold seer in a trance,

Seeing all his own mischance--

With a glassy countenance

Did she look to Camelot.

And at the closing of the day

She loosed the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white

That loosely flew to left and right--

The leaves upon her falling light--

Thro' the noises of the night

She floated down to Camelot:

And as the boat-head wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her singing her last song,

The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,

Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her blood was frozen slowly,

And her eyes were darken'd wholly,

Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.

For ere she reach'd upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,

By garden-wall and gallery,

A gleaming shape she floated by,

Dead-pale between the houses high,

Silent into Camelot.

Out upon the wharfs they came,

Knight and burgher, lord and dame,

And round the prow they read her name,

The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? and what is here?

And in the lighted palace near

Died the sound of royal cheer;

And they cross'd themselved for fear,

All the knights at Camelot:

But Lancelot mused a little space;

He said, "She has a lovely face;

God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott."

The Lady of Shalott (1842)

Alfred Lord Tennyson

i too, am half-sick of shadows.

high up beautiful

seeing Singapore from high up kinda puts things into perspective. makes me think that Singapore is some kind of beautiful, some kind of special. makes me smile at how beautiful things are from a million miles up in the sky, when you can't see the mundane details that're even ugly. everything is just a mish-mash of colours, all blending into a breathtaking blur of lights and shapes. the boundless landscape stretching over the horizon tugs at my mind's eye, leading me to imagine that maybe i could be boundless too, just as the city before me is. i feel small, yes, but i feel so unfathomably free at the same time.

up, up, up we went, barely noticing the ascent. the only thing that gives away my slow climb upwards is the increasing span of the lit-up city i can see. the ugly, awkward trucks and vans that i initially am faced with gives way to beautiful orange lights crawling across the crisscrossing highways. suddenly from where i am, the details don't matter anymore. everything makes up the big picture that i see, contributing to the snaking trail of lights across the dark landscape, like the gleaming scales of a serpent - each unbearably ugly when you stare closeup, but so beautiful as the patterned skin of the snake. i like tiny pinpricks of light better than when i can see the lamp that spits the light out from its ugly mechanisms. i like it blurred, undetailed, unmessy - just beautiful. things are usually so ugly closeup; the details complicate things, mars the pristine condition of the picture-perfect gloss that almost everything has.

like happy families, they seem like happy families from a distance - loving parents, beautiful, clever children racing on to succeed in life. but when you get too close, get to know each individual member of the loving family too well - you realise that the father is heavily in debt and depressed, the mother is extremely insecure about everything in life and this takes a toll on the family; the older child is too much like her mother and hates herself for that, covering up her insecurities with perceived cleverness and pretty clothes, the younger child wants to do everything but manages to do nothing at all. just a random example, but too many 'perfect' families are like that up close.

things are most usually so much prettier from faraway. details complicate, create a mess. it all make perfect sense, how some writers romanticise life by constantly drawing in the bigger picture of Life After Death, putting on some meaning to life, or writing things in epic scale. then, some writers want to portray the "ugly reality" of life, dragging in sordid details in families, individual angst, day-to-day hardships. to make things beautiful, all you have to do is look at them from faraway, from high up - the details disappear and all you see is a collage of colours. when you get back to ground level, everything becomes indescribably ugly and inane all over again, crowding your mind out.

i like it better from high up. maybe - just maybe - one day, i'll really fly.

say hello to the new term

all of two days in school, and classes both excite and scare me. i don't know how this semester will turn out, and being around people 24/7 IS that huge change in my routine - & i'm uncertain how that will turn out, too. a lot of work to be done, and i'm even looking forward to it, warped as it may sound. i'm running on some spare batteries now i suspect cos clocking an average of 4.5 hours of sleep the last two days has allowed me to keep days chock full to the brim, from early morning at 8 or 9 o'clock, to 11 o'clock at night.

here i am in my own homey room, typing this all in, never wanting to leave again cos it's MY room and i feel so comfortable in it - but knowing i'll have to go back to school tomorrow night and face Thursday morning with a vengance.

tutorial participation will be my new goal this sem - and i will do it even if it kills me.

snap - a lot simpler.

my school term is beginning tomorrow, and i'm so listless. i'm not looking forward to anything, i've somehow been stripped of the anticipation of looking forward to anything. there're not many people who i allow close enough to spoil my mood - and the irony of it all is, they all have. on and on, like a broken tape recorder. you know what they do with broken tape recorders? heck, what i do with such junk? - i do precisely what they're called. i junk them. throw them away.

if only it were that simple, really. you can throw away a broken piece of equipment and that'll be the end of it, but you can't quite do that with someone who keeps talking like a broken electronic device. unfortunately.


and all this about relationships and the people i love, sometimes i just wish i didn't love them all - and things would be snap, a lot simpler.

these three words.

so after ranting on about how i want to just simply believe in what i believe in, i'm faced with the most pressing predicament - i don't even know what i believe in anymore. it's silly, really, to not know what i believe in. there were things that i thought were unchanging, but time and age has taught me that i thought wrong. some other things though, they remain exactly the same, and yet not quite the same. it's irritating how everything in life gradually becomes more & more onion-like as i get older, as i start to see layers on layers on layers.


so what do i believe in?

i believe that we choose to stay in love with that one special person. we could always choose to fall in love with two people, three people, four - as many as we want, and it is perfectly possible for us to love many times over the way we thought love was only reserved for that special someone in life. but choosing to just love that one person is a choice, just as choosing to love all those other people is a choice, too.

i believe that as much as i want to stick to my guns all the time and not compromise what i believe in, the world is such that that is quite simply impossible more often than not - so i learn to keep my beliefs to myself and let the beliefs that others are trying to impose on me slide cleanly over my head.

i believe that forgiveness is a choice, just as love is.

i believe that no one was made stupid - but some people are just simply more aware than others of their own mental capabilities. in that same vein of thought, i'm starting to believe in the possibility of my own limitations, that i may not be as clever as i make myself out to be and i may actually just be well, too-normal.

i believe in prayer. even though my prayer life is, at the present moment, in a horrifying state, i still believe in the power of prayer. which then brings me to the next of my beliefs - i believe in God, in an entity beyond this world beyond me and all the other sentient human beings placed on earth.

i believe in a life-purpose, and i believe that mine is somewhere out there, i just can't quite grasp what it is at the moment.

i believe in the potency of absence. when you want to make a statement, you verbalise it and make it known, to get people to listen. i know it, but i also know that you don't always have to create something for it to be significant. sometimes, the absence of something is equally, if not even more, potent - except that far too many people don't realise it but sense the potency of something not being there, and what do they do? they just create more senseless noise to construct the "source" of the effect - but at the end of the day, that is what their creation is - senseless, and just.. noise.

i believe in happy foods. the power of gastronomically pleasing cuisine is very real, and i'm sadly a sucker for such perk-me-ups. there is something very base about eating something that pleases your taste buds, but at the very fundamental level, it works precisely because it's so primal, this pleasure.

i believe in personal space. when i'm alone spending time with me, i get in touch with my inner self, my soul, and i see far beyond my present - ahead to what's before me, and far behind me. i discover what it is that makes me tick and what it is about me that others like or dislike, and decide what to do with all these discoveries. it doesn't make me a more likeable person, at any rate, but it makes me more self-aware and i think it's tremendously important to know yourself for who you are - warts and all, as a friend used to say.

i believe in love, in how it changes people. i believe that being with people who love you in return for who you are makes you feel good about yourself and makes you a much nicer person because you begin to accept yourself for who you are and stop wearing innumerable masks to cover up. it's immensely powerful, and i'm beginning to feel the effects of being loved for who i am change me from the very bowels of me. some part of me still questions and wonders why, but a large part of me just embraces that and... boy, it feels good.

i believe in so many other things, you have absolutely no idea.





these three words are said too much,
they're not enough.

never break my spirit

fools. narrowminded simpletons. scream scream scream - all you want. would you like to know how it all just flies over my head and nothing you say matters? you can never make me think what you want me to think, never. you can break my body down and reduce me to tears but you will never, never break my spirit. your worldview is so painfully narrow and reductionistic that you have no space for the possibility of anything, but. when things don't fall within that too-simple worldview, you just dismiss the possibility of it even existing. unfortunately, there's me, who has the unfortunate ability of seeing things outside my own goldfish bowl. trapped in your pathetic perspectives, that's what you all are. you lack so much and are so blissfully unaware of it all that it's sad, sometimes, and i pity you. i may cry out of anger and frustration, but that doesn't mean that i've bowed down to what you have said. on the contrary, my resolve to believe in whatever it is is just merely further strengthened. when you push an alleycat to a corner, it inevitably spits, and you ought not be surprised when it does cos you're stupidly, asking for it. i react the way i do because you leave me with no bloody choice. what's the use in it all?

i'm really tired of people who think i should believe in a certain set of beliefs, who think i should act a certain way, do certain things - f*ck it and just bug off. from now on, i do exactly what i want, i will say exactly what i think cos i'm through with trying to be someone i'm not, someone everyone else wants me to be.