the art of dreams

stretched out and thin,
stretched out and thin;
balloon skin of monotony

stretched taut over a mass of emptiness.

if i could be anything i wanted to be, i would be an artist sitting along bridges in europe, palletting the soft hues of sunset, the bustle of paved streets, the gray scent of rain, the naivete of colourful sweet shops, the scarlet red of Dorothy's clackity-shoes. i would doodle abstractedly and dream dreams. dream day into night, and night into day.

snippet:
to the man slouching in the corner, warily eyeing people file out of the mrt gates

i saw him staring, him oblivious
to the discomfort produced in me,
by his drapery of distaste,
as they rushed out in haste.

he looked as though
there was something else to expect,
something other amiss.
as though the gates would be a fist,

or a fork, clamping-hard-jaws
banging down. hard. sudden.
on unsuspecting dancers whose long
fancy dress hem got stepped on, torn.

a falling backwards, in distrust of the gate,
a pushing forwards, in ignorance of the mate;
then in tandem with the millieu behind
and before, i rushed through as its perilous bait.


if i had a shop to call my own, i would name it mollify/ enigma/ penchant/ parablet/ sultrysunday/ sultanas/ lilliputian/ terrapin/ mouthpiece/ bamboozle/ teacosy/ lifequilt/ plaits/ felicityfowl/ felt/

university

we are such stuff as dreams are made on.
- Prospero in The Tempest, Shakespeare

i do think the only thing worse than dead hope is limp hope: hope that is prone to being deflated, prone to lead to disappointment, hope that is about to die. i do wish they could kill it quickly, a quick unfeeling death, so i do not have to wonder any more whether i am meant to stay here or to fly over and away. speed is of the essence.

why is there such a distance between people? chasms between minds and souls, hearts and feelings. words are bridges that attempt to cross that void to the other side, but in the darkness all you can rely on is instinct, blind guesses, numb trust, that the bridge will truly land you on hard ground on the opposite end; but we can never be sure. words fail, love misfires, bridges are brittle. only the Cross stands, and often we lose sight of it in being preoccupied with lesser things. we would rather grope in the darkness than tread the bridge already constructed and laid down before our feet. for the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. we think that taking the obvious too-good-to-be-true route is bound to harbour some unseen trick, is to obvious to be true, more naivete than cunning.
that's when our cleverness gets ahead of us and trips us up in our mad rush forward.

eaglet boy

in school now, a slowly savoured break after hours of throat-wrenching, mangling of students. [i wish. more like the other way around] i am sitting at pau's desk because i do not have a laptop to call my own-
and recollecting my day, my frizzled ends and spaced-out mind ino a space where i can recognise them as mine again. there were some happy moments today-


in 3E, when i was taking them for the assembly period, some of them kept showing me the comics they drew. they are planning to start a comic club to sell their comics, titled "PsychoBoy" and "EagleBoy" and "MrBeanOnAWalk"etc. eagle boy's got enough stuffing in it so got potential. they wanted to give me one of those free but i told them to keep it, couldn't bear removing 1/4 of his comic collection. [he has four booklets. FOUR.] random numbers jump out at me now, i have been staring at models and numbers and fractions which are numbers on top of each other for the whole day [i am not too glad over the fact that my days are numbered and so are the hairs on my head, too.] THEN this boy sitting at the back of the class folded me a crane and told another boy to give it to me. aw. childish pleasures. Crane is sitting on my desk now, smiling.


then there are not so happy moments, moments when my nerves are stretched out of my skin and snapped back again, i am disjointed, hoarse, pathetic, drained. no time for a full meal. no time to breathe.

and now i gotta go!

wanting a breath of fresh air.

gerry has just introduced me to the mystical and musing world of photoshop, deviantart and other comp design stuff. it is kinda overwhelming. like how on earth can they come up with stuff like that?! right now i need a techno geek to help me with the amuletrose project. any kind souls? gr. played hockey with the juniors today, and sir didnt blow for their obstruction, hacking, wrong side tackle, crossing fouls. maybe im just being a sore loser, but maybe not. i was playing badly and feeling queasy throughout the match cos i ate Chippers' fish n chips n Full House's chicken strips & Gelare's brownie with butter pecan icecream just before the match and all that oily goo gunk was swimming around in my tummy inducing me to throw up.

*
so i skipped dinner. the solution to too much food is less food right? makethsenso. today in class i made the boys write poems, and to my surprise Valen did one about a beggar really well! he's the tallest boy in my class and he's Valen cos he got born on Valentine's day, poor sod, and he's normally distracted and destructive in class, but WHOA! you read the poem and you would never guess the emo-charged-poet is none other than him. i gave him an A+. but i dont have stickers so i just put a smiley or sth. i should invest in stickers, somehow it thrills little dorky kids :)

*
next week the kiddos are going to a Dairy Farm camp. THREE DAYS! i mean, how much of cows and milk can you get before feeling like belching or lurching? so i am missing precious lesson time with them because they are staring at cows. it is not a flattering comparison, that they'd rather be with cows than in class with me. [okay, thou shall not envy cowses. AND, all the other teachers are losing precious lesson time.] i think i am too young to be a teacher, i would find it amusing to have a teacher who blogs.

*
normally i get sleepy in the staff room and i just nap at my cool desk, but fitfully because it would be unglam if some student creeps up behinds me and catches me snoozing, which they are very apt to do. i have pride issues.

*
sometimes i want to run away, out of my shell, and just be different
sometimes i think running away is merely a detour back to the same point.
like in a carousel spin, always travelling, and unravelling distance
back to the same.

sometimes i know running is isolation, it clears your mind for a while
but that etches in sharper detail the stagnance of non-running moments
senseless movements, in raw defiance of the still air and inertia that pulls at you
running pushes forward, oblivious of forces that ground you downward and tugs you back
breaking free of a million Liliputian threads.

but most of the time i do not know what to want
when i can want, or when to want
what i can want-
and i am weighed and left wanting;
despite all that running.

explosive edges & silent contemplation

just came back from dpf session at edlyn's house, we havent met in two weeks, i havent seen jasmine in two years, and as usual it was refreshing meeting up after a span of dryness. i don't know, work and shop-starting has absorbed much of my time and my attention, and the weirdest thing is i don't feel it abnormal not to be spending adequate time with God each day. like z said, its a make-or-break thing, sometimes, in our moments of folly, it seems so easy just to tell God you're not real -despite all that i've witnessed and experienced- and just walk away. it is so easy just to walk away.
*

great sis just blew up at dad when he said 'why you never call back when you not coming back to eat' and she said 'who says? i'm eating what. what's the big fuss. if im not coming back obviously i'll say right?' explosive edges. i hate such scenes. and mum's sulking cos she cooked a big pot of porridge and said nobodys eating it. well as it turned out all three of us ate dinner so no idea what she's fussing about. sometimes food is such a bane. i mean, come on, it's just porridge. and that's gotten 4/5 of the family blown up. [i'm not blown up, as in angered, but probably one of those scattered pieces of debris that got caught in the explosion.]
Daryl is asleep.

*haiku by somebody

graffiti:

thoughts sprayed thick on walls,

strips and slashes of colour,

louder than voices.

*haiku by me

porridge:

whitish gobs of paste

thinly spread on household ties,

waters it tasteless.

*amuletrose -

today i read a student's joke: what starts with T, ends with T and has alot of T in it?

answer: Teapot.

hahahahaahah. hmp. despite all my current busyness, i am glad to be with pau and jingli. i am thankful the teachers are all so nice. i am glad they have morning prayers. i am glad they have isaiah 40:31 plastered on the front entrance and the Lord's Supper's painting on the wall. i am glad the children are a healthy mix of the naughty, the intelligent and the mild. and in a contorted way i know i'm meant to be here: the verse: Set me free from my prison, that i may praise your name. has stuck with me for quite some time. right now i feel like my prison is being inarticulate, and teaching has given me so much more to talk for [lessons], so much more to talk about[school], so many more to talk to[students], but it is not the be-all-end-all. praising him is.

* cherie

i think one reason cherie n i have stuck out through so long is that we respect each other's private space, and we trust each other through the silence. we're both low-maintenance friends, in the sense we don't chitchat often. we dont know what we're specific stuff we're doing everyday, but we keep each other in the know whenever there's sth important, we understand each other without having to say much, and there isn't the tension of Always having to sms, Always having to talk on the phone, Always having to hang out just because that's what best friends have to do. these friendship qualifiers are superficial and indicates a lack of trust i think. perhaps silence is the test of a wellworn friendship? because the more secure you feel with another person the more you know that temporary absences don't change relationships.

*grappling with silence. just shut it.