i hate old english with every fibre of my body.

i'm in an absolutely rotten mood now, because i have two tests tomorrow and i am prepared for none of them. i don't understand my lacklustreness, and utter lack of interest in anything other than sleeping. perhaps i'm trying to find my footing in this not-so-new-environment, and i'm constantly slipping and hitting brick walls, and all this is causing me to lose interest in what i used to love. Old English is absolutely killing my love for anything English, and i am starting to think it is in my best interests to drop the stupid class and stop worrying over it. what is stopping me, however, is my pride - because i don't want to feel like i'm dropping it cos i can't do it. i hate feeling inadequate in anything, but this retarded class which requires me to memorize stupid nouns in their stupid genders is really killing me because my brain hasn't been forced to memorize anything in such detail since A-levels, which was 3 fricking years ago. i keep telling myself that i don't have to prove anything to anybody, so just drop the stupid class if it's killing me. but something's stopping me from doing it, and i wish i just had the guts to say enough's enough. i am thoroughly unprepared for the test tomorrow though, so i think if i fail that one spectacularly, i might be forced to drop it anyway, because it's not worth the effort.

omg i've wasted an hour whining abt all this, and i haven't even touched my nouns to memorize. shootmenow, please. ugh. :(

Old English is bad.

omg i'm so failing Old English. i dunno how on earth i'm going to pull through this one. i'm doing so bloody badly! it's ridiculous. my brain hasn't memorized things since i left JC. and in this class, i'm memorizing tables of nouns, pronouns and whatnots, in Old English, it's absolutely ridiculous. i don't know how i'm gonna pass this class, i'm gonna need a huge miracle. 

and, i'm so unmotivated to go for classes. they just don't really interest me that much anymore. i dunno whether it's the classes, or whether it's me. but whatever it is, i think i need to get my act together pronto, because unfortunately, i'm just not the smartass kinda person who pulls rabbits out of the hat at the end of every sem.

i am a sad goldfish. :(

it just hit me, 

that i might possibly miss you even more today than i did yesterday.

nominative, accusative, genitive and dative.

i am so tired. i have a quiz tomorrow (the second one of this class for this semester already, believe it or not), which requires me to remember Old English personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and nouns. which are all subdivided into nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases, of which there are 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons, and also masculine, neuter and feminine genders.

WTF RIGHT.

i have only managed to memorize the personal pronouns, and my head is currently swimming with weird alphabet. i have two more tables to memorize by tomorrow, and i have no idea how the crap i'm gonna do that, considering the fact that i am intending to check out the house party at no. 48 tonight. i don't know what's gotten into me, going for all these parties and stuff. it's not like i like to drink that much. i think i'm just trying to make sure i don't come here and fall into studying like i do back home.

i'm tired though. cos last night was a packed night, what with the Canadian Cultural Night thing at 7pm, then Brass Taps with some of the exchange students after that til 11pm, then coming home to find a monopoly drinking party in full swing. i finally came up to my room at 1230 and had to force myself to shower and attempt to do some readings. which, admittedly, was a failure. and to top it off, i got up this morning with a mighty headache, since the alcohol kept me from sleeping well last night.

i do know that i can cut myself some slack, but at the same time, i'm not sure how much slack is too much.

remember, every new beginning is some beginning's end.

only heaven knows

is it ever right to fight to keep the one you love? cos if true love sets free, trying to keep someone you love by your side mayn't be the best thing for him/her.

so maybe, when you truly love someone, you just gotta let him go. or her, whichever is applicable.

only heaven knows.

:)

there's that rush of happiness everytime i see your name pop up on my screen. 

love me, love me not.

i am slothy.

i woke up at 10am, read Wacousta for a bit to do my Canadian lit assignment due Wednesday, called Clem, spoke to him til 12pm, then went straight back to bed. i'm so tired, i don't even feel like getting lunch for myself. i think this is the effects of sleep debt. and i thought i'd escaped the sleep debt thing since leaving Singapore for here. who knew that night owl habits would be so hard to break?

so what do i see myself as? 

a whirlpool of ripples, breaking up any whole image you might try to see. 

a flash of pink on the horizon when i feel good; a smudge of brown in the green grass when i'm sad.

fluffy baby pink socks that feel so good when you slip them on in bed at night. 

the scent of jasmine body butter that permeates the room when i unscrew the tub.

gloomy thunderclouds and the splattering rain.

you love me, - you love me not.

but, so you know; i do love you.

winter sonata.

so left with too much time on my hands, my sleeping thoughts are stirred once more, and i find myself thinking too much about the most inane things more than ever. waste-time thoughts. my mind is an archive of my life - dig deep enough and you'll find memories that record every event that's worth remembering. and some that perhaps aren't, too. but they're just there. everything just tumbles down over my head and overwhelms me sometimes. and with all the images in your mind crystallizing before you, you begin to see paths leading out of all of them into dark unknowns. all the alternatives to the choices that have made me who i am today. as tough as it sounds, the choices i've made in my life are unretractable. life isn't linear, it doesn't just have a simple cause-effect relationship. life's an immense tangle of points that are all intertwined somehow, like a web.

if i had to take just one lesson home from reality and life as i know it with me when i die, it'll have to be that everybody lies. it's a sad fact of well, life. i've lied a gazillion times in the 21 years i've lived on this earth, i've been lied to probably twice as many times as that. it hurts at first to think that everyone lies to some degree, to have someone lie to your face without blinking an eyelid. but when you realise that you do it too, it seems less heinous. 

musing aside, things have been improving dramatically for me. perhaps it's the proper sleep i'm actually getting every night now - i'm not so homesick and mopey anymore, not to the extent that i was last week, anyway. it's been snowing practically everyday here though, and my boots have been getting all icky and stuff, with the salt stains from the slush splashing up as i walk. it's gross. but i'd rather that than to have the bottoms of my jeans get dirty, anytime. 

i've bought tonne of clothes here, most of which can't be worn here. this is what i call foresight on my part. :D and Old Navy has the cutest slippers ever. i feel like going back to get one in every colour! i just might do that. heh. i've been deprived of summer-type clothes for too long already. give me back my slippers, shorts, tank tops and dresses!

so i was also thinking as i watched Winter Sonata, that there's more than one way to die. there's death, and then, - there's death.

words fail me.

it's been almost two weeks since term began here at Guelph for me, and i still don't know where to begin. while in some ways it's been by far the most exhilirating two weeks of my life thus far, the effects of being so far away from all i love is beginning to take its toll on me and oftentime, i wake up in the morning just a gigantic ball of tangled up emotions. here, i have all the time in the world to do things, and yet, i just don't have the desire or ability to do anything else other than contact my loved ones back home daily and while my hours away with them - either online, or on the phone. i do realise that this attachment to home could be hampering my exchange experience - after all, if being so homesick is such a big thing, why come all the way here to mope and moan? i am bereft of words, and even if i had them, i'd be unable to wield them to form some sort of coherent explanation for my bizarre behaviour here. perhaps i miss both the figurative and literal warmth of Singapore and my home too much. here, it's figuratively AND literally freezing all day, with temperatures dipping to negative double-digits daily now and people being together sometimes i suspect merely out of necessity. i yearn for warmth of any kind, i really want to make something out of this and not be a pathetic victim of circumstance. i should have more desire to do stuff, and at the same time, i should have less desire to do stuff too. i expect, and am disappointed. i cling on to every shred of news about things going on at home as if it were a life raft, all the while knowing that with every passing day, the memory of me in my friends' minds back home fades a little more. i wonder if people miss me as much as i miss them, knowing that perhaps it's just not a fair question to ask because i'm here, all alone, whereas the reverse isn't true. i question myself on a daily, even hourly basis here, wondering if i'm doing things wrong or right. and i try to create warmth in my room by curling up into a ball at night in my bed - but to no avail. it just seems like everything i try to do just doesn't work, and i'm frustrated out of my mind. perhaps all the stories you hear about exchange is really just a myth, because i am NOT having the time of my life here at all. the realization of that just makes me wonder at whether i'm just a freak, or whether everyone else was just embellishing. 

so then, life makes me wonder. half way round the world, when you are in bed and the sun is shining in my face. this is what i was afraid of when i formed attachments to people, and this is what i'll be afraid of forevermore. i love, and it hurts to be away. it hurts so badly sometimes to feel, and i half wish i didn't, because then starting anew wouldn't be so hard. it's when you know you've left something better behind - that's when you're stuck in a stalemate because everything forward just doesn't cut it. and so, i'm stuck here, unable to go back home and unable to move forward as i should. and it hurts. especially knowing that i've spent a substantial amount of my parents' money to come here and mope and be sad and be pathetic. i tell myself everyday to not be sad, to not be homesick - but at night when i'm talking to all back home, my resolve crumbles and it's all i can do to not bawl my eyes out from sheer misery and loneliness.

sigh. what a pathetic picture of me i've painted. i wish i could spin some other story up, something more befitting of an exciting exchange experience. but that, would be a lie. but then again, aren't all stories somewhat untruthful to some extent already? words fail me.

hello guelph!

alright so yesterday's post was positively depressing i'll admit. it's not quite as bad as it seems, really. it's just the lack of proper sleep that has been getting to me. i'm so stressed out, in such an unfamiliar environment, missing everyone at home, and i think it's wrecking havoc on my physical body. but i will do this. this is what i've wanted to do, so i will enjoy every minute of it. 

starting... now. :)

first three days in guelph

so. i am here in Guelph, finally. i don't even know where to begin! so many things i've been feeling, so many things to say. maybe what would sum it all up is that being here is so very different from being back home. while i'm trying to make it all work out the way i intended it to, by the usual tenets of staying positive, be open - blahblahblah, i do think that being away from everyone is taking its toll on me. especially since i'm here all alone, and the friends i do make are well, not very close ones. just hi, bye, see you next week kinda thing. monday and tuesday were actually not too bad, today was just terrible. i spent most of my morning in class, from 930am right up to 220pm, with a one hour break at abt 1220 - and didn't sleep right last night. in fact, i haven't been sleeping well at nights here. my room is right next to the heater and it's on some sort of timer, so it kicks on and off every half hour or so. and when it comes on, it makes this really annoying knocking sound. so everytime it starts up, i suspect i wake up or something. whatever it is, i look like hell right now, with eye bags and all. and i feel like hell too, my body really aches. i feel so alien here so often, almost like an outsider looking in at things through my body. almost like an out-of-body experience, those that people experience at night when they dream and they can feel their soul taking flight and leaving their bodies. i never fully appreciated so many things back home in Singapore, things i've taken for granted, almost. the Asians here are few and far between, and then, they're usually PRCs or those born here. i feel so different, i never thought i could feel so different. i mean, back home, it's like, i thought races were unimportant, that race just didn't matter. i guess that was the idealistic me thinking, cos out here, i realise that the racial card is played so very often, albeit very very subtly. perhaps it's all in my own mind, - i differentiate myself from other people because i think i am different. but i keep telling myself yet, and yet it doesn't make any difference to my interactions. people give me really weird looks when i walk into class, mainly cos i'm a lit major and i suppose there's this preconceived notion of Asians being unable to speak proper English, much less enjoy reading or writing it. it annoys me, i must admit, to be looked at as different - i hate it. i don't like people staring at me cos of the way i look, cos i have black hair, yellow skin, and eyes with epithelial folds. i don't like it how professors look at me and wonder if i'm in the right class or not. i don't like it how i'm expected to struggle to speak the language i grew up speaking, i don't even like it when people tell me how surprised they are at my "perfect English". and some people even ask me what language people speak in Singapore - do you guys speak English, or Cantonese? i find it insulting, almost, how i'm expected to be unable to understand and speak English. and it's frustrating how everyone speaks with this American accent and expect me to speak the same way - and when i don't, i'm treated so differently. i don't like so many things about being here, and yet i do like many things too. i like the independence, i like meeting new people, i like attending my classes even, cos they're so different from those back in NUS, i like having so much time to myself, i like just being here and having the chance to live my life outside my tiny island for a change.

but it doesn't change the fact that i'm starting to feel really homesick, and looking at all the things from home in my room just doesn't help. in fact, it makes me feel worse. i dunno how people do it, those people who do their university overseas. it's mind boggling. i've only been here for all of three days but it feels like i've been here forever and it feels like i've been away from home for such a long time already. i spent a good two hours lying in bed just now just crying my heart out cos i miss home so much, and then tried to think positive but well, sometimes, it's not just in the mind. i need proper rest, and then perhaps i'll be able to take in all this more positively. 

YOOHOO

as Fiona said: the end is near!

and then i shall begin my social life again. and attempt to pack my life into two suitcases to take with me to the other end of the world. it's so bloody soon, i can't decide what i'm feeling anymore. things are just happening way too quickly for me and i just feel completely engulfed in tides of i dunno what. 

all poetic and lyrical form have abandoned me. does this then make me a truly postmodern writer?

well, attaching swanky labels to my inability to string together decent sentences just doesn't seem that right.

:)

i am feeling rather good today in spite of the - on hindsight - horrendous Asian American lit paper i just had to usher in the beginning of my exams. i think this positivity has everything to do with my recently collected essays and the discovery that i actually did pretty decently for two modules i had given up for dead for various reasons, which included me not finishing reading most of the novels of the module, and losing books and notes the night before the exam.

i just do think that these two modules which have suddenly increased in my estimation will have to make up for my potentially dismal 20th century lit paper. according to the lecturer, people did quite well for the test in general, in which i had obtained the extremely disgusting, poor grade of B-. so if everyone did well and i did mightily shittily, where does that leave me except in a dire situation. then the essay - i don't have a good feeling about it at all, it being the last essay i turned in this sem, the result of it being the last is the extreme lack of motivation with which i wrote it. as i have discovered, there seems to be some sort of positive relationship between motivation and performance, ie: with greater motivation comes greater performance, so the inverse would also then be more or less true.

but okay i shall stop whining because i have an nm paper tomorrow - and that A is completely mine to lose. so work hard i shall, instead of playing around with and troubleshooting my webcam which was probably the highlight of my night last night.

i'd rather take the blow, at least then i would know;

but baby don't you break my heart slow.

evaporate into sweetened milk

the hot, humid sticky December rains, & i will evaporate into sweetened milk. 

nothing pains me more than illogicity and irrationality, and if i could slay that scaly fire-breathing dragon, i would. 'cept that i'm a maiden with a coronet in my hair, so theoretically i'd need a Sir Lancelot to come charging through the golden eaves, his coal-black hair glinting in the sunlight and his burnished shield raised. unfortunately, i live in Singapore, so all i'd have is perhaps a Mr. (insert-typical-Chinese-surname-here) to whisk me off in Comfort cab if i'm lucky, drag me on the mrt if i'm not.

i'm craving for mango with dripping condensed milk, for swamplands and crocodiles, for deep fried oily crispy things that would shorten my life by 10years. i see the white crane spreading its wings ready to take flight, the striped tail of the fat tabby nonchalantly falling off the concrete step in its nap, the leopard and its spots yawning in the afternoon sun.

i see deep blue crystal waters that glisten azure and turquoise, purple swatches of the twilight sky smeared with strokes of deep crimson, gashes fierce and soft. i see the velvet midnight sky cloudy and thick with humidity, hear my breaths, see the shaft of light from the open door, Yellow Light.

betrayal among lilies.

it's funny how i see it, i feel it, and i hate it - and then i don't see it, don't feel it, but still hate it anyway.

i've been betrayed by logic, by the absence of logic, and the very presence of presence. 

spirals of smoke swirl up from the chimney, but no fire burns in the fireplace below. all there is are the glowing embers from the night before that refuse my stamping to transform into cinders. die, i say, die. and yet, green shoots sprout out from the hard winter ground, between the non-existent cracks and up into the polluted air - dying the moment they came alive. thorns are enmeshed with the roses until all that you see is brambleweed and poison ivy that stings and sweetens with calamine lotion. i taste the sour odour of garbage in the air at the back of my throat and gag, bottle caps falling from the sky. tin cans are crushed every day, buttons pop, threads snap - and i am glued together like pieces of a broken china teapot that has been flung from the top of the empire state building. soft linen, silky and fresh, cover the table with the bowl of steaming chicken soup, labours of love. 

rifles at point-blank range go off, i blow out your brains, you kick me in the shin, i embrace you and stab you from the back - again, and again. and pull out the knife in my own back. then, white light, red light, green light, golden. poppies in a field. i've been betrayed, and i've never been more alive or dead at the same time.

the siberian express.

with all my essays slain and all that's left for me to do on that note is to pick up the carcasses when they start falling back to earth in the form of Bs and Cs, i have nothing more to look forward to except endless mugging for the next one week of exams. one week, and it'll all be over. then it's hellooooooo Canada and if everything doesn't go well, hello to four months of freezing loneliness. of course, we don't go into things anticipating the worst, so here's to four months of good cheery fun, the only kind of fun you'll have in school as an exchange student - with no care for my CAP for the first time in my uni life since i flounced my first sem in NUS. 

there're so many things i want to do now as i sit with Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior before me - i want to look at clothes online, level up my character on wow cos i'm trying desperately to catch up with Trina so we can start doing things together, plan my itinerary for NYC, read some poetry at my own leisure instead of rushing through them like the Siberian Express enroute to Russia.

so i was thinking today, that if i could relive my life again any way i wanted, i'd still have chosen to end up here with you today.

okay as i am typing this, i am all-too-aware of the extremely precarious state i am in at the moment. my 20th century essay is due tomorrow at 5pm, but i am not even half-way done, and the half that i have done is very very bad.

i am really in a state of panic now.

i am having a terrible case of writer's block. it's like, i have no idea what to say at all.

that being said, the luckiest thing ever just happened to me. i received a rather decent A- on a paper that was missing one whole page. i can only say that God loves me very much because he probably knew that another B (or C, for that matter) would kill me beyond any hope of redemption for the rest of my uni career.

6 things in search of a point.

several things happened today that are worth mentioning. some perhaps more than others, but still worthy of mention nonetheless in my rather boring life.

so. here are six statements in search of a point. any point.

1) i am REALLY going to Canada! the Uni of Guelph has finallyfinallyFINALLY confirmed my place there. finally, after all the months of hypothetical planning, i can actually look forward to something concrete. that being said, i kinda can't wait to get the heck out of Singapore, but at the same time, i'm reluctant to leave all that i love behind, if only for a few months.

2) i fell down today upon missing a step on my way from FASS to the biz canteen. it was raining, the ground was slippery, i fell. two boys walked right by me as though i was a snail crawling on the ground, even though i yelped fricking loudly cos i twisted my ankle while falling and landed on my knees. and the book in my hand flew out to land at least a meter away from me. i have nothing nice to say about men in general after today, but i will say that the only thing keeping me from wishing that all men would turn into frogspawn at their sheer uselessness and ineptitude is that i know a couple of really good men. boyfriend included.

3) i am done with my stupid Asian American lit essay, which i produced very very painfully. all i'm hoping for is a B+ for it. i can't believe how low i've stopped. i might as well be hoping to "just pass" on my exam and just graduate next year.

4) i am not looking forward to starting on the 20th century essay due on Monday. i am thoroughly thoroughly sick of writing when i don't feel like writing. the only consolation is that nothing can be worse than what i've already done so far.

5) my Hopkins essay is ready for collection tomorrow. at the mere thought of it, my heartbeat shoots into overdrive and i feel like i'm going to faint. as you can perhaps tell from my reaction, i do not expect joyous news regarding that particular piece of work.

6) as a result of the previous three points of the above, my CAP this sem is going to be extremely bad, is going to crash before my eyes, and there goes any hopes of attaining any semblence of a 4.0 second upper anymore. damn it.

& i never believed that the multitude of dreams and many words were in vain.

my birthday last weekend was a total blast. i feel a need to reiterate that point over and over again because it seems somehow to make up for the shitty weekend i'm having, what with the two final exams i had on Monday and Tuesday - the Tuesday one being absolutely ridiculous with me losing Middlemarch the like very day of the exam, and misplacing half my lecture notes the night before - and the two papers i still have left to do which i have absolutely no desire to begin on.

i really need to get out of the house and supper, shop, whatever. i can't wait for Monday to come cos that's when my last paper - the 20th century one - is due. i can't wait for Monday to come cos it's reading week, which would mean i get to breath a little, if only a little, cos i have no more school and can concentrate on studying once i've gotten myself perked up again.

on one hand i'm glad you tell me untruths to protect me cos you know the truth would hurt, on the other i think it's perfectly useless for you to not tell me the truth when i - being somewhat intuitive about things like that - am able to sort of grasp at what really happened. it borders on paranoia and i don't like it, but fact is: you can't change it, i can't change it, and we have to live with the consequences of things that happened unseen in the past, now many years later. i think i'd rather know things rather then to guess at what may have happened, cos the imagination is cruel and it supplies more vicious, hurtful thoughts than reality may actually hold. 

...I re-enter

the city in which I love you.

And I never believed that the multitude 

of dreams and many words were in vain.

i am screwed big time. there is a bloody big Romanticism test tomorrow morning at 9am, and i have only covered about half the material in the course. either i am dead, or i am dead. i dunno what to say anymore. i am beyond upset and i am pissed off at how this is turning out. 

and i have a horrific ulcer on my tongue, which i gave myself a day before my birthday, that's keeping me from eating properly, talking properly, sleeping properly, and swallowing properly. in short, it is ruining my life.

my life seems to be in shreds at the moment. but i am contemplating just going to sleep and praying my heart out because there seems to be no point in trying to cram anything more into my already frazzled, panicked mind - which seems to be able to only concentrate on panicking and panicking and panicking.

so much for the lovely birthday party i had over the weekend. this is what it has come to.

sick.

i am falling sick, and two days before my birthday, too.

what can i say besides this sucks?

enough.

everything seems to be slipping away from me now, everything's going so horribly. it isn't supposed to be like this, i'm not supposed to be struggling so badly, i'm not supposed to be so crushed. i've come to a point where i'm beginning to think this all just isn't worth it, where i'm ready to raise my puny white flag in surrender just so that all this will just stop. maybe it's time to stop trying, time to stop fighting. maybe i'm overreaching, and as we discussed in lit tutorial today, overreachers seem destined for failure, by virtue of the very word "over" in "overreach" - implying that i am reaching beyond my limitations. i don't understand why it's all suddenly become so hard, and the possibility that i have come to this sad situation because of my own actions pains me more than you can imagine. it is one thing to be a victim of fate, to be a marionette of some puppeteer greater than yourself who controls your actions and determines your eventual outcome. i would really have no agency in such a case, no responsibility for my actions; just swept up in the tide of time that ebbs and flows in mundane and epic scales alike. however, realising that i was probably the very cause of my fix, realising that the consequences of all my past actions have finally come back to haunt me when i thought i'd gone off scot-free, it makes me indignant, disappointed, and just really angry with myself for letting me down. if you know how hard i push myself, you would understand the depth of my disappointment and exhaustion now, when it seems as if nothing i do from here will make anything better, besides making me feel like some sort of tragic Romantic heroine who trys and fails but who inspires admiration anyway for fighting for lost causes.

well but who am i kidding: i am no Romantic heroine, no fighter of lost causes - i am merely a girl who's been let down by her own devices and while staring at the dark abyss of sheer mediocrity, is contemplating the role that she has played in this pathetic tragicomedy that her life has become.

i am suddenly at a loss for word even though ironically, i have been producing massive amounts of words for my essays lately. my emotions have been going out of whack, so much so that i'm at a point where i'm choosing to freeze anything else other than the motivation that drives me to continue working.

all the feelings in the world, i cannot even begin to write about them. how finite language is indeed, that it cannot capture the infinite, can only provide a blurry snapshot.

i like to chew on my rulers.

i don't like to write my essays.

i hate school

i am annoyed. i have one last poem to cover for my Hopkins essay but have stupidly left the book i wanted to base the analysis on in Clem's room. which leaves me with no choice but to do it tomorrow morning. oh hang on, isn't it Tuesday morning already. i hate school, i really hate it with every fibre of my being right now. i am this close to hecking everything and just thumping something out on my computer right now before i sleep. how on earth am i to get up at 7am to get the book from Clem to continue with the rest of my essay, which, surprise-surprise! - is due tomorrow.

i need a hero.

:(

it is now 4.10am and i am not in bed yet. this is the latest i've stayed up this entire sem. 

the problem isn't really with not having enough to write - i just have too much to say and not enough words to say them all in.

i love writing, but i've got to admit that i hate essaying.

i'd spend the end with you.

my 3000 word 19th century essay is due on tues and i am not even halfway done. it's gonna be a long three weeks if i keep up this kind of listlessness. i am too sleepy but i cannot allow myself to go to bed yet because i am determined to finish up at least one of the poems that is required of me by tonight. and i will worry about the other three tomorrow.

things that shouldn't disappoint always end up disappointing more than they should.

if the world should stop revolving, spinning slowly down to die,

i'd spend the end with you.

& when the world was through,

then one by one the stars would all go out,

then you & i would simply fly away.

i'm sorry.

i am sorry for being such a selfish prick of a human being. others-centred i am most certainly not, but i try my hardest not to be so self-centred as i am predisposed to be. 

i am sorry i want so much of you although you are already giving me so much, i'm sorry i want, period.

feel it.

i accidentally blogged in my old blog again this afternoon, which led me to browse through my life of two years ago. while on some level, i am thoroughly appalled at the depth of my emotions, a part of me still wishes i could write like i did then, when i was feeling all those things as they came along. a part of me admires the me then, how i was so reckless and so unfettered, throwing all caution to the wind and just living & loving, no matter what the cost. perhaps that experience has made me into who i am today; slightly cautious, still prone to fits of uncontrollable, strange emotions that i try to relegate to the back of my mind because they are deemed unimportant and silly. 

take a read here: http://rippledsilk.blogspot.com - if you wish to be able to intimate at what i'm talking about.

like this afternoon. i called the boyfriend up on the verge of tears, wanting to tell him that i was upset and scared and terrified and everything all at once - but i couldn't do it, because i wouldn't have been able to explain why i was feeling so. so, i quashed the tremor in my voice, willed the tears to stay put in my eyes, and half-whispered that i didn't feel like starting on my work, half-whispered good-bye. i put down the phone and started crying uncontrollably, just because. not because i was stressed, not because i was whatever, but also because i was stressed, also because i was scared - i cried just because. how do you explain to someone who's so rational all the time why you feel like crying when you can't even explain it to yourself? when you don't even see the neccessity of explaining it to yourself. 

then, i understand why the boyfriend won't be able to be with me through this exasperating period, i understand perfectly. but at the same time, i'm upset at the prospect of having to trudge through the days mired in my own upsetness. as i said in a previous blog, i feel like i'm shuffling through the cards of insanity in my mind. time with family, own work, own space - i understand them all. and yet, i am selfish and i need need need, want want want. so i cannot give a voice to these, i cannot allow these to take on a life of their own by giving them form.

sometimes, i feel as if i've lost the license to live recklessly. everything must be logical, everything must be purpose-filled. i cannot feel the world's derth of emotions exploding in my heart without reason, i cannot want to fall asleep under the sun in a lovely meadow with no care for what tomorrow brings. it seems that i've been forced somewhere along the way to become an adult, to grow up, be responsible. premature, or not, i don't know, but i've lost the desire to be all i can be, because what i want to be is not in line with what i should be. as i grow older and spend more of my life on earth, i become more earthly and less an individual; i become just like everyone else, and less like me.

i say i am still wild, unfettered and free inside, i claim i'm living the life i want to lead - but perhaps what i've really done is i've sold out, and this is the only life left i dare to lead. illogicity and irrationality used to be the order of the day, i felt freely - truly, madly, deeply - i fell in love extremely recklessly, almost carelessly, and i was just a mess of emotions and feelings. my life now has no space for these things, chaos is unwanted, certitude is prized. i do wish i could revert back to that passion that seems almost too vivid, and yet i choose to remain where i am because this is the safer choice, this is the safer path. colours are softened, sounds are muted, smells are filtered out. i am too socialized, and too safe, too cowardly to feel without reason anymore.

& yet, you do know that i've always loved you. always have, always will.

a wave of panic is washing over me, threatening to engulf me and sweep me away in its gushing wake. i am having trouble breathing, my chest is constricting - and this is a too-real sign that i am, at the end of the day in spite of all my bravado: petrified. 

i am too ill-equipped and unprepared, stupid and dull. oh, how the mighty have fallen - those who think the world of themselves ultimately find themselves at rock bottom, splat on the floor, shapeless.

the power of the word.

so if i said here, that everything i've said in the past two years on this blog is a lie, would you believe me? if everything i said had happened had, in fact, not happened, would you believe me with this one negating post? or would you be inclined to trust my earlier posts when i narrate in a realistic, linear fashion?

just thinking about the power of words.

i wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

i have been given a kick in the ass with a B-/C+ essay, and i want to badly for it to not be real. unfortunately for me, it is too real and i am stuck with it, and the only thing i can do is look forward, cheesy as it sounds. my anger and indignance has somewhat fizzled out and all i can do is sigh as i look at my paper and sigh again and again and the uphill battle ahead of me.

so the other night i had another bad dream. you have absolutely no idea how i wish i could control the stuff of my dreams, cos all these icky dreams leave me unnerved when i get up in the morning. if only the feel of your hand in mine could take the place of spectral insubstantial fears. i can't help but feel a tad haunted by all this; i am stalked in my sleep and the horrible part of it all is that it is the only time when i cannot control anything. 

i wish i could exorcise those phantom fears, the ghost of paranoia - all that inexorably incessantly upset me as i behold them in my waking life.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw, ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

from Carrion Comfort

Gerard Manley Hopkins

for eternity

i was thinking about it just now, about how i love words. words allow me to express myself, define myself, even - words allow me to weave magic, letters to beautiful sentences to stories. i play with words all the time, make them do what i want. but at the same time, i despise how they rollick around, escaping my attempts to pin down an exact meaning - because meaning can change so easily with a rearrangement of letters. rollicking around, eluding capture, just playful playing play. ploy? 

you tell me something and i know you mean it. but too much lit has made me realise how insubstantial things you say really are. after all, i can easily take everything and reassemble them, reconstruct my truths, scramble them up and build them from scratch, claw, paw, poke - until it's unrecognisable and something totally new. i hold certain things as non-negotiables in my life, certain truths that i hold as my Truths, certain things i flatly refuse to allow the contamination of subjectivity to fall upon. so do i believe that there are no truths in the world? well, no, not absolutely; for there are some things like Jesus Christ dying for my soul that remains unchangeable because i do not allow truths like that to be tampered with. i choose to accept things like that as wholly true because things like that make up the foundation of my being. if i don't believe that Jesus died for me because He loved me, then how do i even negotiate the concept of love, why do i even want to love if what i can do is pursue self-gratification? 

so when you say "i love you", i believe you mean it now. but i also believe that when you said "i love you" to a totally different person in a totally different time, you meant it too. i want to believe that you did, because then i can believe that you mean it now. but a part of me hates that you loved before, a part of me wants to be the first and the last, a part of me wants a little bit of eternity. 

i can't promise i can heal you

but if you want to, i can try.

to sing this summer serenade

the past is done, we've been betrayed

it's true.

someone says the truth was lie

i believe without a doubt in you.

you were there for summer dreaming

and you gave me what i need

and i hope you find your freedom

for eternity.

yesterday when you were walking

talked about your mom and dad

what they did that made you happy

what they did that made you sad.

we sat and watched the sun go down

picked a star before we lost the moon

youth is wasted on the young

before you know, it's come and gone

too soon.

& i hope you find your freedom, eventually

for eternity.

unfettered, wild and free

sometimes, i think some people stay in some relationships because they're too comfortable in them. it's a bit like your security blanket, you've had it for too long, ergo, you dare not throw it away. i don't mean relationships can be broken just like that, like say, when you're bored of it. rather, i'm talking about those relationships where it clearly cannot work anymore, where boy and girl no longer love each other just because but have to find reasons to keep 'loving', where there's too much pain and hurt involved. if my relationship ever becomes like that, i would be the first one to recognise how unsustainable it is, but at the same time, would also be the first one to cling on tightly to it precisely because it's dying, and i don't know what it would be like otherwise. we all like familiarity, we all want comfort, and while change is the only constant in the world, we all hate change. perhaps i still have notions of "true love" and love should be this and this and this. perhaps i still am a bit idealistic, a tad romantic. perhaps life hasn't treated me harshly enough to show me how love is practical, utilitarian, and ultimately, seemingly self-serving. all i know is that i still have my Christian notions of what love should be and shouldn't be, and even though all the above might stare right at me, mirrored around me a thousand times over, i don't want to believe in any of that.

i am, after all, still, a free spirit - and i still yearn to be unfettered, wild, and free.

ants

okay looks like i've caught the Inane Blogging bug. looks like this will be the case for the next five weeks or so because i see no other way to vent and spout nonsense to just release some of that pressure.

there is so much i want to do in life, so much. and yet, i am just me, i have so little opportunity, so little strength. and yet on and on i go, like some little ant trying to save its queen who has, unfortunately, eaten ant poision.

ughhhh.

i am feeling yucky, very unwell, and i just basically want to be able to lie in bed and not do anything. very unfortunately for me, i have a test to study for tomorrow, and have 1200+ pages of Middlemarch and Vilette combined left for me to read. i felt so terrible this morning that i couldn't get up without puking, so i had to not turn up for my project meeting. 

my stomach is kinda empty too - the last meal i had was last night at 7plus. let's see if i will just die in my room from the pain or starvation, i wonder which comes first.

anger management.

my ability to let rip at precious things when i'm pissy is quite astounding. my behaviour appalls me, disgusts me, makes me wish i were a nicer person all over again. i want to be nice, i want to love those whom i love, and yet, when i'm grouchy, all my notions of rationality just fly out of the window and leave me with this strange, seething hollow shell of a person, full of anger just needing to be let out and eventually appeased. physical discomfort is no reason to ill-treat those who are precious to me, and i will have to rein myself in. bite my tongue, watch my words, and take deep breaths.

on a totally different note that is perhaps somewhat tangential to the above, it is that time of the month when i'm feeling all sorts of blah and would like nothing else but to snuggle into bed and sleep the entire day away. i'm so unenergetic and lethargic, and that's just the beginning of it all.

work work work

doing some math today, it hit me how fine a line i'm treading, and how uncertain the final outcome really is. according to the CAP calculator NUS has so kindly provided, i have to score an average of A- for my modules this sem to get a semester CAP of 4.46, in order to reach 3.90 by this sem. following which, i go on exchange and my CAP is frozen. and when i come back in my fourth year, i have to score another average of A- for my modules to get a semester CAP of 4.25 to reach 3.95. then, in the second sem of my fourth year, i have to get 4.35 in order to FINALLY reach 4.00. 3 consecutive semesters of hard hard work. failing which, i remain stuck in my second lower honours mediocrity. 

i am very stressed just thinking about it.

and just so you know how stressed i am at the moment, i have paced myself at AT LEAST a hundred pages of Middlemarch a night, and a hundred pages of Vilette a night too, to be read concurrently. both have to be read by the beginning of next week, and i am, well, trying my hardest to speed-read and not lose anything out of it. i know my classmates say sparknotes is good, but i'm a coward and i daren't rely on sparknotes for my A.

pressure has been building up steadily in me and i'm taking it out particularly badly on the boyfriend. which makes me an irrational woman in all senses of that word, also mostly because i can see how retardedly i am behaving, but i can't help myself. every single day, all i seem to want to do is to scream my lungs out because i wake up not rested, with too much on my mind and hands, and not enough tenacity and will-power to do it all. partly also because i'm starting to feel dowdy and dull - i haven't shopped in months. there's nothing to look forward to each morning when i put on my clothes. my face is like a pimple minefield, which i suspect is caused by my insufficient sleep and my severe self-accrued stress. essays, books, and tests are stalking my mind incessantly.

i am so in need of reading week.

don't give up.

i do admit, that i'm a little scared, a little daunted, a little overwhelmed just thinking about it all. 

i am a trifle terrified, even. i pray for strength, for perserverence, i pray that God will not give up on me, that i will not give up on myself. 

live each day like it's my last.

it is raining marvelously, i am deliciously sleepy, and i don't feel like doing any work anymore. i was planning my schedule for the next 5 weeks and am looking forward to non-stop action til reading week comes. hiphiphurray. 

Vicki Christina Barcelona. watched it yesterday, puzzled over it for a bit, fell in love with Barcelona, but it is just a bit too anarchistic for my liking. Vicki and Christina are two extremes, and i'd like to think that i fall somewhere in-between. 

i still do want to feel exhiliratingly free, feel as though everything's happening for some greater, deeper purpose - but at the moment, i've got to be content with winning the small battles each day brings. essaying, studying, sliding, reading. 

live each day like it's my last.

good days :)

so today is one of those days when i feel good about myself. these days are coming less and less though, and it's beginning to be a rare (but good) day when i feel confident. i suppose my actual abilities are somewhat linked to my confidence level of the day - when i feel confident and good about myself, i almost instantaneously become seemingly smarter, and vice versa.

so today, i am going to treat myself to a nice relaxing night and curl up in bed with Great Expectations (really fantastic bedtime reading, i know), and only work on my 19th century lit essay plans tomorrow when i am more rested. 

i need to live one day at a time, and perhaps things will come more naturally to me.

bad dreams are made of these

i had a too-real bad dream last night, which has caused me to sleep poorly. hence my lethargy of body and mind in this dreary Sunday mid-day, trying too-hard to finish up a lecture of Romanticism before i leave the house, convinced that one night will not be enough to finish up three long lectures of Romanticism notes. 

bad dreams leave me feeling unsettled when i get up, leave me with a gross bitter aftertaste in my mouth that doesn't quite go away throughout the day, leaves me wondering.

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.

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.