someone you used to know.

listening to Collin Raye's Someone You Used to Know today made me think. 

something so tangible as the love you feel, something that feels so real and certain when you're feeling it, as though you can't imagine not feeling that - it's actually more unstable, more uncertain, more fleeting than you ever imagined. how do you go from being a person someone used to love, to merely a person someone used to know? like a stranger, like an acquaintance, it's as though that strong current of emotion that coursed right through your veins, that passion and love you felt, was nothing. it's been broken down, reduced to a past tense. i can't seem to fathom how that even begins to happen, and it just circles round and round in my head, like a bird of prey circling in the sky. i'm not saying it doesn't, i know it does. it happens all the time, like flies dying in the summer sun. but i don't understand the process, don't understand how people just move on so efficiently, dont' understand how things in the now that seem so real can become a thing of the past so far removed. i'm removed from my emotions of even a year ago, there's that gulf that separates me in linear time, but it seems a bit unfair doesn't it, makes you question a bit about the reality of things. am i really existing? if something that existed can cease to exist with the passage of time, then someday i'll be like that too, everything that is connected to me will disappear when people stop remembering. 

it's nebulous, it is, memory. too unstable, ever-changing, something that's like the silk threads of a broken spiderweb. when i think i understand all about memory, all about love, all about life, something else in that chain of understanding breaks, cracks appearing in an eggshell, and throws my stable understanding out of whack, pulls the carpet from beneath my feet, tears my perfect tapestry.

it's a choice to remember or leave it for dead, a choice to preserve the authenticity of everything, a choice to forget and a choice to let your once-love-of-your-life become merely another someone. from seeing someone you loved walk away, to gradually ceasing to want to be with him/her everyday, to meeting someone new, to falling in love all over again - perhaps it's cyclical, perhaps nothing is meant to exist in immutable security. corporeality is then perhaps, at best, ephemeral, evanescent, fleeting - beautiful, whole, composition one moment, ugly, decaying, decomposition the next. fluctuation from one end of the spectrum to the other, from life to death.

perhaps you begin to forget at the precise moment when you take the first step to walk away from the moment, like exiting a movie screen, just walking on and on and on.. until you disappear from sight - and eventually, disappear from my memory.

like a friend,

like a fool,

like some guy you knew at school.

didn't we love,

didn't we share,

or don't you even care?

i know we said we were through,

but i never knew how quickly i would go.

from someone you loved - 

to someone you used to know.

then the good minute goes

i am fully expecting to die where schoolwork is concerned in the next 7 weeks of my life. it is, in my opinion, gonna be 7 weeks that cannot pass soon enough, and yet are far too precious because i have so much to accomplish. 

everything seems to be slipping away from me now, no matter how hard i try. it's like grasping at straws, at thin air, trying to hold on to nothing expecting to feel something. i cannot slip up, i need my wits about me, and yet i am so aware of my own limitations. i am too human, too finite, too inept. and still i try, and i try.

then the good minute goes.

essay bleah

omg i am having so much trouble writing my Asian American essay. i am churning out paragraph by painful paragraph, and this struggle is quite foreign to me (pardon my egotism).

random note: the f1 practice session yesterday was quite an experience. the f1 cars were really really really pretty, and the sound of the cars vrooming by was like, exhilarating. well okay, for the first 10 vrooms. after that, i just felt like i was going deaf. everytime Kimi drove by, i think i let out a little scream. the only way i could tell Kimi's and Massa's car apart was by the little colour thingy at the top of the air tunnel bit on the cars. i <3 f1.

i hate essaying.

ho-hum..

i am so uninspired to write my Asian American essay. i have absolutely nothing to write, and i have three pages to attempt to fill. this is the first time in a fricking long time i have had such a bad case of writer's block.

i think all this heavy-duty lit-book reading is seriously frying my brain. i zoomed through Alice in Wonderland by Monday, was attempting to read the intro to Three Gothic Novels Tuesday, and have finished The Castle of Othranto today. i am thinking of beginning on Vathek tonight too, and perhaps skip Frankenstein because i have read it before and have to move swiftly on to Great Expectations and Ivanhoe. and i have stacks of Keats' voluminous poetry to read (google Lamia, for any of you who might be interested in poetry that's kinda long, google Idylls of the King - by Alfred Lord Tennyson - if you're interested in poetry that's book-length).

and. the newest cycle of antm is still showing in the US so i have no choice but to wait til next week for episode 5 of cycle 11 to be posted. as such, i decided to try watching cycle 3 of Britain's Next Top Model and i think it's actually not too bad, considering how i do not understand what the Brit girls are saying when they get all pissy and bitchy when they fight. great entertainment value though, and Lisa Snowdon is probably a lot more help than Tyra Banks. but i still like my antm because for some reason, the girls' photos are so much nicer in antm than in bntm. maybe it's just cos i grew up on an antm diet, so my aesthetic values are slanted towards the commercialised trashy American side. which is sad, but i'm a product of my media diet.

to top it all off, i have an utterly useless project meeting tomorrow. 8 (or 9) people in a project group to produce a powerpoint slideshow is bordering on ridiculous. it's like one of those stupid light bulb jokes that go "how many people does it take to change a spoilt lightbulb??" and the answers run the whole gamut of stupid.

so, just how many people are needed to produce a slideshow? it would seem the module administration think 8 is the magic number. ho-hum.

ungrateful child

so i am all sorts of ungrateful, rude, a bad child, basically.

when you want my money even though i am supposed to be saving and you give me shit for not saving enough, what else is there to say, really.

i will never ever tell you how happy i am when i earn money again.

i hate money.

so sick and tired of all this i am that this is so fricking ridiculous and i don't even know what to do next. entirely mired in a catch-22 situation, constantly cornered, and i fucking hate money and all that it means. i can't spend it, can't save it, what should i do with it. everything in this stupid house is all about money money money, and it's not because we have too much of it either.

so we work till we die to surrender all our money to our parents.

where is robin hood when you need him, when some people have too much money to even know what next to buy, and when some of us have so little money that we don't know what next we can buy. on the surface, it seems perfectly workable. but when you dig a little deeper - anarchy reigns supreme.

the pain of finite hearts that yearn.

as a living, breathing human being, i am all too aware of my limitations. i have so many things i want to do, want to accomplish by such-and-such a time; before i get too old, lose my youth, am no longer able to see far into the horizon because the twilight of my life is drawing nearer, let slip opportunities because of priorities.. it's limitless. and yet at the same time, i'm inifitely limited, trapped in the confines of my tangible, flawed, weak human body. i kinda understand why Gerard Manley Hopkins, a 19th century Jesuit priest who wrote poetry, did what he did with regards to his poetry.


allow me to demonstrate with the piece below entitled Carrion Comfort:

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist -- slack they may be -- these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoíd thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.
Cheer whóm though? The héro whose héaven-handling flúng me, fóot tród
Me? or mé that fóught him? O whích one? is it eách one? That níght, that yéar
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.



read it out loud, and you will see how odd it is.
grammar rules have been thrown out of the window, the structure of the poem as we know it (i think it's a sonnet we're looking at here) has been twisted out of shape into something quite confusing and unpalatable. what Hopkins has done essentially is to break the usual rules of language that bind us all as human beings in the attempt to express the inexpressible - here, the inexpressible being his profound experience of spiritual desolation. language itself is a construct with neat, orderly rules of grammar that dictate what we can or cannot do in the "proper" usage of language. and because it is precisely so constructed, it is unable to construct a semblence of profound experience within its constrains. infinity cannot be bound by finite constructs.

my whole point of bringing in this whole weird poem and its weird language is in attempt to express some form of the many many things going on in my head - it seems to never stop, unceasingly churning, neverending, - infinite. i don't have that ability to twist language around to express my inexpressibles, and hence find myself having to hijack the theory behind someone else's attempt to explain my own lack of proper phrasing. it's almost pathetic, how limited i am in all that i am.

similarly, i want to love you with everything i have and spend as much time as i can with you each day. it's something that has just come to be, not something that i force or remind myself to do, not like swallowing my vitamins in the morning when i have to make the conscious effort to remind myself to go to the refrigerator, open the pill bottles, and pop them. it's become almost like breathing, sleeping, something that's become natural. as much as i want to do all this, i recognise how bound i am to the chains of my mortal body. so finite, even though sometimes the emotions i feel inside of me seem almost infinite in their intensity and persistence. which brings me to the sad realization that sometimes, loving with every fibre of your being just isn't enough. loving with everything you have (or i have, for that matter), doesn't always guarantee that the one you love is satisfied, happy, appreciative. it doesn't necessarily automatically equate to the one you love realising how much you love him/her because it's everything that you have - because let's face it: we were not born with equal capacities to love. some of us love more, some less. my loving you would include me willing to forgive almost anything precisely because i love you - your loving me may not necessarily result in the same "i will forgive you practically anything" mentality. i have come to accept that that does not mean you do not love me, and that your love is very unfortunately confined by your (and mine, too) too-finite humanity.

it is that realization that is most hurtful, most upsetting, and which ultimately leads to a sense of resignation at the way things just are.


i guess another 19th century poet, Robert Browning (who is the husband of the exceptionally sappy Elizabeth Barrett Browning) knew what he was saying when he wrote Two in the Campagna.

I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
Where does the fault lie? What the core
O' the wound, since wound must be?

I would I could adopt your will,
See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
At your soul's springs,--your part my part
In life, for good and ill.

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
Catch your soul's warmth,--I pluck the rose
And love it more than tongue can speak--
Then the good minute goes.

Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?

Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!

The old trick! Only I discern--
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.

oranges are not the only fruit

i can always see it so clearly, those paths that lead to so many other places. not just one straight road that leads to one crummy building - many many winding roads, each leading to their own landscapes. Elysian fields, seashores, metropolises, Neptune's watery realm - so many, all different. why is it that only i can see them all for what they are, not as paths leading to nowhere as you claim they are? why do you keep shoving me to that one boring cement road that's too straight, too safe, too unhuman? is it me, or is it you? we both talk, we both sing. i sing in A, you sing in F or whatever other key clashes with A - and our melodies never meet, never soar into a cresting melody. they clash, never meet, stay separate, always. why do you always fear the unknown, that which is not part of your world? i suppose that is perfectly normal, to be fair, but can you not see that what exists as truth in your world doesn't necessarily share the same stable status in mine? my world's full of pied colours, never garish and flat. i don't like primacy, it's too simple. perhaps you do. so why can't you understand that you and i are simply not the same person? i am me, and you are you. perhaps you never felt me really leave you when you gave birth to me - i am still a part of you, as much as i have your blood flowing in my veins.

but well, you should know that oranges are not the only fruit.

unmotivated, uninspired, insipid, tepid, tired.

so unmotivated, 

uninspired, 

insipid, 

tepid, 

tired.

stressedoutofmywits.

I AM VERY VERY VERY VERY STRESSED.

a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty.

mystery. i always thought it to mean something i didn't understand, something i wasn't truly deeply sure existed because i couldn't explain it. the word didn't even sit well with me cos of the Mysteries we have as Catholics. the Mystery of the Eucharist - even though we have a name for it : transubstantiation; the transforming of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, it's just a big word.

but while doing some reading for my presentation of a 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who was a Jesuit priest, i came across this:

"a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty".

the nothing i fear i am.

time has been slipping out of my fingers at an astronomical pace. school began abt 5 weeks ago, and before i even realise it, term break's looming. closer and closer, like a ship threatening to get wrecked on treacherous rocks. and i can do nothing to stop it coming at me. i just stand and watch. now of course, it is needless to say that i am immeasurably tired with schoolwork. and i know, i do know, that i shouldn't be griping about my own schoolwork tiring and wearing me down - wait until i get to the working world, and i'll really know what being tired is like, and the argument just goes so on and so forth. i don't doubt that corporate life is tiring. on the contrary, i'd expect it to be exactly so. it's just that school is wearing me so thin now that i get really pissed off at people who cajole me into not being stressed/tired/serious about studying. now, we all know that i do not flippantly cuss, but these kinda of people illicit an instantaneous "fuck off" reaction from me. people who talk flippantly, ignorantly, just usually rub me the wrong way. you do not know how it feels to come home at the end of the day and find yourself with very little free time on your hands because you're constantly rushing something or the other in preparation for the next day. when your whole life revolves around school and work, you start to feel a bit upset at the imbalance of it all - and that's how i'm starting to feel. at the same time, i'm constantly telling myself that this perceived imbalance, this utter lack of time to do anything but what's on hand, is just temporary. i keep pushing myself to work harder, read more, think faster, believe that i'm smarter, talk intelligently, absorb and process at pentium 5 speed - that i wonder if one day i'll just break down from all the pressure and become the weak, useless nothing that i fear i really am.

i am enjoying school, i really am. but at the same time, i'm really really tired, too. 

downright dull

so i kinda noticed, that anyone who reads my blog would think i'm perpetually depressed, disgruntled, disagreeable. i can't seem to help myself, - melancholy and misery seem to seep out of my very fingers and ears.

so i am feeling some sort of despondent at the moment.

dispirited,
dejected,
and, well, just all sorts of down.

i can't quite place my finger on my unsettled state of mind, in spite of having triumphed through two presentations in the span of two very short and packed days. i am trying to unwind, sit down and just let it all go, i really am. the stacks of reading waiting for me still manages to creep into my mind though, even if it is but the faintest shadow. intimations.

i still am all the above. dispirited, dejected, down, depressed, downright dull.

skip a beat.

do you know, my heart still skips a beat when i see your face, your name - anything that has to do with you.