why?

i wanted to have a lot to say, to amuse
to write and spill
but what do i have?
i don't know.
those three words, and a vague, eating,
emptiness.
i could be a lot happier if i just chose
a mood switch- those convenient switches
that i so frequently rely upon
so often that the wires are fused,
and the current no longer flows;
currently the past has overtaken me.

which sinks more? the silence or the words?

but please dont misunderstand,
words make me out to be more affected than i am
but lately it seems delirium has caught up with me
and the pendulum swing goes both ways
and you discover, hidden beneath the layers,
emotions you've never known
surfacing, pulling you this way and that
contorting and spreading, distorting and foaming
like wretched waves dissipating a thousand tensions.

to find ourselves so happy and so sad
to find that life spends itself out only in extremes of being;
in the perfectly balanced momentum
of a swing.

what do they know?
but the simulacrum of us.
pretty pictures of gloss and paint
what do i know?
that it goes higher than their eyes can follow
and yet, in synchrony,
that the minute cracks flaking the dry paint cut deeper
than the cracks of our smiles

"wannabe alive"- lizard.

cool blinkies in KL fronting mariott hotel. xuezhen, sini, myself.

shes so happy!

the blur induced by spice girls' WANNABE:
favourite song of the night.

ode to the dead

im in studio now! and the reason im typing is that i just presented, so NOW is the only moment this week i have a zone of relief. a space of nothingness in which i can breathe. this much belated post was delayed by a harrowing series of presentations, projects, lack of and need for sleep, (2.5 hours last night! haha. and four hours on average everyday of last week. but nows not a time to gripe.. :) yay im going out tonight! guess who haha hmm. amanda heng's supposed to call me last night but she didnt, and her comps down so i duno how shes gonna see this but.. in case you do, TONIGHT'S A GOOD TIME! haha.

there is currently one dead lizard and one dead cockroach in my toilet! reminds me of picasso's quotable quote, "you can never be too careful with other people's lives. i saw a large spider about to attack an ant, and thought, what a cruel thing! and picked up a stone... and discovered to my horror i had killed them both." hahaa. you see, in the middle of the night i went to the washroom and gasped to see a grotesque flesh-coloured internal organs gleaming huge lizard (although i realise the exact same string of adjectives may be used to describe humans like you and me as well) scuttling up to the top of the door but i was too tired and preoccupied to bother to scream, so i just did my own humble toilet repertoire and minded my own business... until i left the loo and discovered to my horror that the unfortunate lizard got kiapped in the door ledge as i opened it. ack! ...the fragility of life. -moment of mournful zen silence- haha okay conscience soothed. yay! One Down.
hahahaa. must get a brave soul to...peel it off the door.. it deserves a proper burial. (read: the door deserves to be clean.)

erik's critting us individually now. today he's kind of harsh. in essence he said, that is ugly. i cant take it. redo. we have our interim crit on monday! lets hope he softens before then into like, kind encouraging putty mush. yeah right. i had so much to say but now..the words have dissipated somehow. except. gerry! you are the best! do not be anxious about anything but by prayer and petition present your requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus! <3

GOD help, take away my tiredness. i feel like toxins have clogged up in me; i havent been exercising or eating well or sleeping well, and another crit on monday. i almost cant take it anymore apart from you i am nothing. take over, please.

inside/ out.

it's been one rollercoaster week.

i've been so close and so closed
so flamboyantly in a crowd
and so quietly alone,

so desirous to bless and edify, yet
so close to cursing (not only under my breath)

so entirely blunt-edged, prickless and acquiescent
and so sharply cutting and acrimonious

so dry and wizened like a cactus
yet moist and fresh with the inner swell of water

so tiptoeingly, warily, vulnerable
and so brazenly self-contained

so grindingly thirsty to the palette
but so near the well

so close to hate
and so close to love

so blind and unthinkingly blundering,
wandering into recesses of incomprehension
yet containing such clarity of soul and mind,
i wish i could be more swept away & more blind.

raphael rampage

it's been a while since i last had the temptation to write; perhaps because i have been relatively happy. and happiness is a state ill-disposed to reflection due to a general state of contentment. and contentment does not dig deeper beneath the surface, because it is on the surface of life on which she glides with ease. which is why, i think, so many poems sound so absolutely wretched. there is a perverse link between literature and dark emotions.

that does not mean i am unhappy now, i am just inspired by uhm. vacancy. sitting inside my 'painting and national identity' class this afternoon, with words and concepts drifting aloft, snippets of the renaissance, shakespeare, canonical, old masters: leonardo da vinci, michelangelo and raphael- all these distant ghosts fleeting their eras and casting their eerie shadows thousands of years behind them, my mind just drifted and i thought about the rain outside.

rain falls in layers; it divides the landscape into separable layers of foreground, middle ground and back ground; its like a white veil that blots out the distance with increasing opacity. it is a gentle whitewash, wrapping trees and buildings alike with frail, brittle draperies. yet even as it obscures, it tempts the eye onward, behind the forbidden veil, behind the mesh in pristine seduction
toward oblivion,
where the eye sees no more.

-

then in how technology works i rediscovered a new word, one which erik used as well: heuristically. "stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation" a mode of questioning which provokes individual thought and curiosity. and the reason why school is often considered so bland is because it provides too many presupposed 'answers' to questions we don't even ask. its like pouring fuel into a tank that's capped

here was where i got interrupted : and here is where i continue

yeah! i like my tutor cos he makes us think, cos he's inquisitive, and cos he's just slightly on the edge of subversiveness. quote of the week,
"who CARES about site? Every time architects are given an assignment, they pop up on the site with their cameras and snap away, and create pretty panoramic views of the site and BOOM architecture happens. That is the most ridiculous thing ever. Well fine, there are times when the site can be interesting and provoking, but at other times it can be just plain boring."

"Why must we 'express' the nature of a material? Isn't that such a weird concept? I mean, as humans we like to cover ourselves up; no one goes around without clothes with the desire to 'express' his inherent nature. Why must the material be 'honoured'? What kind of weird concept is that?"
-
just now i spoke to my p6 student from cathigh over gmail chat. haha. he is so funny. but also very snotty, typical gep kid.

me: haha. learn to enjoy school! at least canteen food is cheap

kai.boh: but lousy. noodles

kai.boh: is just water and noodles

9:09 PM oh yeah and chilli

me: haha there ARE other stalls like the rice stall

kai.boh: canteen food tastes mostly like water without chilli

rice

rice is hard

9:10 PM me: you're a growing boy

its okay

kai.boh: it might as well have been rice ball

and the mainstream are totally philistine

yeah right

9:11 PM must i be subjected to endless streams of vulgarities on the stairs?

even the teachers side with the mainstream

me: if they're philistine what does it make you? haha

kai.boh: david.

9:15 PM kai.boh: we replaced the word philistine with mainstream

kai.boh: so a sentence could be like this:

Tobby is utterly mainstream

it can also be an adjective

me: oh dear. that isnt very nice

kai.boh: Don't do ur work like a mainstream

or a verb

James, dun mainstream around and help me with the SS Project

9:16 PM me: thats how gep-ers become known as intellectual snobs, you know

kai.boh: that's a joke

only tobby does that

and he is

undeniably

a snob.

kai.boh: do u remember joshua

everybody calls him fatso koh

and he deserves it

always irritating other people

and jeremy koo is always with him

9:24 PM i think joshua is a freight carrier

he carries jermys in between rolls of fat

ABSOLUTELY BRUTAL, that boy. but oh so funny. hahah. i dont condone it of course, i play the didactic role of teacher quite well, dont worry. (im banking on the chance that they dont google their names and discover this site by random coincidence.)

and here is where i think about waking up at 730am tomorrow
here is where i stifle a whine
( I DONT WHINE.)
here is where i wonder if i should read harry potter before i sleep
here is where i stop postulating..
here is where pillows deflate

update of a life

the throne! moniza n shuying n i were working on. i love it. n royston who went to visit.

yiting n i :)

alexius and i being spastic like our tree, hahah. he's off in the US now. no wait, he's on the wretched plane

absolutely adorable christabelle and edlyn, my youngest cousins

feels like a weight has been lifted off
when the curtain falls there is a sudden clarity
the frozen postures of the dancers thaw, their icy stillness dissolves
and life is breathed into them again,
as natural light falls through the crack in the ceiling

been thinking about comprehension:
i just need to know things, to understand them,
to pick objects up and handle them, to fidget and figure their mechanisms
what makes that sound? what does it feel like?
like i used to when i was a child-
knocking my mother's nailpolish lacquer on the ground
until it cracked and its colour spilt open
until my parents had to keep every ornament on the shelves so i would not
knock all of them over in my effort to fathom them.
---

here is where i stop being cryptic:
been receiving many complaints.
hahaha.
school has started, and i like my studio well and good so far. all very nice people
ive yet to meet my french tutor, i wonder about his accent, and how to pronounce his surname
wonder how he looks like n if he's the type of tutor we'll all love on first impression
cos first impressions count
and i realise i comfort eat quite a lot. like when im really sian or tired i'd walk over to
the happy machine and either get 1. chilli tapioca chips 2. chocolate 3. ribena

module clash is bugging me abit, but God said "do not worry about tomorrow, for today has enough trouble of its own" amen to that. you have no idea. so... if at worst i only have 4 modules to take, so be it. so be it. if he brings me to it, he will bring me through it- usp requirements, a good semester, doing well in the modules, completing whatever is required of me excellently

"excellent". a new favourite word. on top of "yeah, correct" which gerry tells me is my habitual phrase. when i was in the bus today, there was an aki student talking about life in NUS to two exchange students. i don't know which year he's in, im guessing year 3. he said,
" i don't like the NUS education system because it doesn't allow you to be creative. Too many deadlines, so rushed."
but i was secretly disagreeing vehemently, because isn't creativity the creation of solutions to problems? And problems all innately have a 'deadline' because of their need to be resolved- pressure drives creativity, and the challenge of creativity does not occur in a timeless vacuum. In fact, any solution which is too delayed ceases to be appropriate or effective, and ceases to be a solution. Anyone can solve problems given infinite time, but it is within fixed time boundaries that creativity and ingenious solutions are necessitated. Without the timeline, what is creativity? there is no such thing. God made the world in 6 days. hahaha. and the 7th day for rest, which i shall succumb to now. thank You thank You.

humdrumtitlesthatdontmakesense

she sits by the window
in silent repose
the minutes crawl by, each dripping second
the static flow of thought
flow frozen, like piercing icicles
cracking through the mind
into the tender flesh of the conscience.

things and thoughts flash
mercilessly
she stands stricken
by the weight of such speed
and the threat of losing such depth over the flatness of time.
the acceleration of emotion and fleeting ghosts of
recent happenings rendering her even more still,
fixated in a wax figurine pose of composure
the quiet eye of a storm.

did she say something amiss?
and while each fresh layer of muse
accumulate, they dull the senses
to numb sore ulcers of wretched guilt
something she shouldn't have said
something he shouldn't have done
something she should have considered;
something other than this negation
than this void.

curiosity and memory breed a longing
to excavate another's mind, to open locked doors
although she does not hold the keys;
no she does not have heart enough
to hold an apology,
which if unmeant, would unfurl and be laid bare
like stripped grave cloths;
empty in its sallow stench of death
no the memories must be preserved,
lest they be marred by the musty trivialities of ritual
polite words meant to be said which hold nothing
and silence prevails- its loud, insolent voice shouting volumes
across the distance.

so icicles stop their creeping
they ought not fracture the pristine, glassy affront
which keeps things together
thought is kept from cracking her placid expression
like shards wrapped in velvet bags
she's holding it together
whatever it takes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
is there ever a line you cross?
to the other side
that cancels out the former
things cool and fade until they reach an equilibrium
like icecubes in a room or hot coffee losing steam
an equilibrium
that is tasteless and colourless
until you don't feel it anymore
a neutral distance
that loses you a friend?

just-a-space-filler

feels like i haven't blogged in some time.
cos life has been monotonous, i mean,
unless you wanna hear about the intricate
processes of making rock-looking paper, or
making paper look rocky-
first you feel it on your fingers, the wet gooey warm globs of churned
mache, glistening with starch, and you dab it in gollobs
onto crumpled waxy AIA paper (collected in truckloads from
Singapore's Recycling Plant, very useful place: expanded megaversion of
what RAG is all about ie. A Dump.) and then you wait for the muck to dry
and resemble what is hopefully your pretty, tough, mental image
of rock, and if it doesn't dry fast enough you make a stand and tie
a hairdryer to it such that it becomes a rockdryer (and that must be the ultimate
ambition of every hairdryer that ever lived!) and if the hairdryer creates wind which
causes the AIA paper to flap undesirably, you swap the dryer with an infra-red
lamp which heats up the whole rockcave while you squat inside it trying to
add more papier mache, and feel like you're being roasted in the redlightdistrict.

AH, now you see what a wonderful conversationist rag has made of me!
i'm sure by now all of you are sitting right up in your seats with
eyes wide open and minds intrigued by the amazingly
wondrous feat of making rock out of paper look sufficiently rock-like, yet
also rockingly reveals the papery roots from which it sprang, such that
the rag judges SHALL KNOW that it is WE who have resurrected the potential
of paper and caused paper to be not just paper, but well,
Rock.

---


what a load of rubbish. just 8 days more, felicia. you can survive that. then.. school starts. i couldn't get one of the science modules i wanted from USP, which was rather unfortunate. God, please, show me another i can take.!

anyway i like the Singapore River, even though its arguably not much of one because its so small. but it is proportionate to our nation in terms of square metres, and its size doesn't make it any less of a river. And even if the cobbled path beneath your feet changes over time, and the river is no longer clouded with a myriad of boats eking out a living, and the languages heard along its banks find themselves translated into a hundred different tongues over time, its native language remains. That it remains a confluence and a conduit, that it gathers the waters into one body, just as it gathers groups of people that are prone to scatter Babel like over the face of the land onto its banks, that it, in a strange way, connects, even as it glints quietly, unassumingly, imperceptibly, through the subtle shadows of nightfall.

aversion, the aperture which closes shut before the shutter can flash.
i just want to shut your words out and build a wall but a wall isolates not one but two-
like the Berlin divide split the nation right down the middle

i wanted to blog but there are no words
aiyah, and i dont want to be emo nor be reminded of potential emoness
so why am i here?

when u dont have answers, what do u do?

korean komrades

rag was at its most fun today, i think. because we came up with some way to mechanize mass-production to optimize efficiency output of papier mache rocks. hahah. so we can now papier mache surfaces in 1/6th the time or something. HOW? don't tell you. and thats not all! while we were in the arts forum, this group of south korean tourists, about 20 of them stopped by and started asking what we were doing.
"uh.. production, parade for floats..."
"fuh..lote?"
"ah, yes. like a..."
"ay.. fes-tee-vahl?"
"yes yes. like a festival"
"OHH! -excited korean mutterings- arts festival!"
he then motions at the stinky papier mache ball in my hand and points at the rock cave to show that he wanted to help. i was so amused (and quite glad to dispose myself of it hahahah!) and passed him the wad of damp mache.

communication was kind of difficult because we were talking over their heads in english and they were talking over ours in korean and there was this mismatched crossfire of words but good intentions saved the day. so whenever we didnt understand something we'd just laugh. someone remarked that we are more likely to do things we wouldn't normally do when we're overseas, just because there is no embarrassment to deal with- no aftermath to clear up, no former reputation to preserve or sequel to continue, and the Present becomes a quirky, curious and irresponsible child without any strings to tie it down. it is free to be itself!

and that is part of what i love about being overseas, too. that i can be someone other myself, yet strangely, be more of myself than i ever used to be. so anyway, i made friends with the korean guy who came over to help me and he kept shaking my hand and pointing out to me the younger korean boys and saying "handsome boy!" then at another "handsome boy, too!" then, "come come, photo!" and we all took a happy family photo in front of our rock cave structure. hahaha. highly amusing experience.

and then the next surprise was, one of the freshies who came down to help revealed incidentally that his ex was my rj classmate! they apparently met during pre-university seminar, which i attended as well, and she ah, so sneaky. we didnt even guess. all along we thought she had something going with another of our classmates. tsktsk. NOW I GO BLACKMAIL HER! muahahaha

have a think.

suppleness is flexibility, and while a soul is supple it is stronger
than if it were tough. like a reed, it gives the feel of weakness,
of yieldedness, yet it is this flawed screen of its brittleness which
is its shield. when she momentarily acquiesces, the uninformed read it
as a weakness, and foolishly satisfied, they back off and are led into complacence.
but the reed is merely accumulating its momentum, like in the hush before a storm.
the knowing notice the way the bending backwards of a reed procures a backlash, that
leaps back onto the attacker in one smooth, graceful swish,
while the attacker has turned his back and begun to walk away.

Suppleness is strength sheathed in silence, in gentleness and forbearance-
three very Chinese qualities.
if you are supple, you know it by the backlash when your secret thresholds are crossed.
you do not break, you merely wait
in the shadows biding for opportunity, for silent and insidious recovery,
for resurrection recoiling from the face of death.

be quiet

"The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." Psalm 145:18

"We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God." 2 Cor 5:20

"...We were harassed at every turn-- conflicts on the outside, fears within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us..." 2 Cor 7:5-6

"Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death." 2 Cor 7:10

"The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Cor 10:4-5

--
because when human words fail, human strength is wanting, only One thing remains.
and i hold on to you. let no one tell me otherwise.

point of information, please.

hello pretty sky in faber drive. i was on an evening walk home in my estate.

amandaaaa heng at macs before she fleww

met gerry to lunch at mos! see she smile until so happy

1. i passed driving! the rain stopped before my test! thank GOD. :D
2. i should type simply, if paul represents blog readership, i am simply not making sense. ahah
3. i have worship practice this week! been reaching home quite late.
4. dad just told me that maybe God spoke to Mary face to face (through an angel) while speaking to Joseph in a dream, cos nobody can argue back in a dream. hahaha! clever.
5. the first time i discovered the use of the rain swipers on the car windscreen was when i was trying to signal left.
6. the first time i forgot to put on my seatbelt while driving was during the driving test. 2 points.
7. TWO POINTS!! hahahaha -shock of disbelief-

seven seems like a good number to stop. oh ya happy birthday joel! but that was yesterday.
must i really type in point form in order to be understood. How about perfect punctuation? With the full-stops at their proper places, and weekly spell-checks on Wednesday mornings where the word-prefect comes along with her micro-ruler and pulls out your belt from your pinafore just to see how much it sags? Not to forget that tuft of hair messily stuffed behind your ear! No, child, every single strand must be submitted to the merciless scrutiny and restriction of gel, clip, saliva or pin into a taut flawless ponytail. GASP! i'm doing it again!

much too much of

As The Poems Go
by Charles Bukowski

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.

-

is there always gonna be a too much in everything, a cap you burst such that it is no longer entre no longer appetising, is it possible that even roses may mellow and be meagre and odious, that in a buffet spread all that is served is excess, and much too much, much too much, creeps covers clouds congeals and it is all bloat?

Imagination, in debut

My words have grown wings and left me,
When I used to be so full of their flutterings
In my mouth, choking to the palette cleave
In contorted musings

My soul is unsettled within me, disposed of its restfulness, insomniac insanity griping and grundling. I make up words to describe the distress, but words are not enough, words and their punctuations and sentences and units and organization, subjects and objects, tenses and grammar, syntax and oontext. Words in all their orderliness, oh! They do not appease me.

Yet they are all I have.

-

I am thinking about imagination, how it is a particular talent of humans, one exclusive to the temperament and nature of our species. We are limited by vision, circumstance and constrained to the fixities of time, yet we have longings and capacities larger than ourselves. We yearn for the beyond, desiring to break through all these swaddling cloths of limitations, to break free and be larger, to stretch and see to the very end, to the back of our heads, although our eyes are indicted to be restricted to a scope of a certain width, beyond which vision blurs and is no more. We have something known as peripheral vision, but it is not enough. Our insides hunger for something more than this, more than insignificant borderline peripheries, because we understand that ‘The End’ is a concept created by the subjects of limitations for their own comfort. The end is the boundary line which demarcates your limits, where your eyes cannot see beyond, where light is not cast onward, where the world flattens out into a single line called the horizon. For God, there is no such thing. For what can end that has no beginning, but just is?

This, then, is the conundrum. With our bodies we stay rooted in our smallness, yet with thought and imagination we project ourselves beyond ourselves- forward to endless eternity and upward to vast galaxies, beneath to deepest lava and mantle core of earth, inward to invisible atom and quark. But there is no end to this extension of our knowledge and our search, once satiated, is at once abetted, and our struggle between contentment and ambition contorts in shrinks and swells.

every time there's one step forward, there's two steps back
square dancing never got anyone anywhere.

a child's eyes.

-
the child's silent, searching stare
suggesting depths beneath the sheen of innocence
delving richness which experience cannot dive into,
placid calm that the turbulent, surging waters of
worldly knowledge cannot demean.

and where we find the truth
is in a simple cusp,
the hollow of a nautilus shell
where a white, enclosing crib buoys up
a fragile truth.
a truth only time, and always time, erodes from childhood's grasp.

a child's wisdom is birthed in a place
(not by swaddling cords of adult embellishment, strangling tight, umbilical.)
but in wombs of emptiness, voids and spaces.
and is provoked, not by experience, but by its very absence
such that no indicting discolouration or bias, shall stain its heart.

the child's adroitness penetrates through filmy layers of insouciance
her eyes are secret slits, knife-edging through superficiality, despite
their compelling, wide-rounded naivete.
a child sees all-
yet blithely, in indifference, casts off all judgement
ignoring the petty adult game of score-keeping
the latter ever seeing, but never perceiving
ignoring the adults, who blindly assume vision without realising their myopia of grudge.

a child sees all,
but as long as childhood remains,
sight is restrained, unarticulated, below the churning surfaces of the deep;
midst-while undercurrents of understanding swirl violently and grow impatient,
waves gather momentum as what is under surges up and forward
to crash upon the rocks in the slurring, slushing white foam outbreak
of cynical adolescence.

@$#%I*$#

had one of those distressing days. you see, i received a call in the afternoon from BBDC which told me i had to book one more driving lesson by TOMORROW, otherwise my driving test date would be cancelled. but the problem is, bbdc lessons are booked to the pit and drained to the dregs (read: no lessons though i kept refreshing the page every 30 seconds for 3 hours). so? i called one of my hockey juniors n asked if she happened to have a class tomorrow which she could give up to me. n she said, yes! the prime time slot at 12 plus, n we both camped at our computers and she cancelled her class, while i tried to kope it. but guess what?
???
someone koped her slot before i did, even though i was there the very second. like ARGH! heart pain. and then i was reading gerrys blog in between the fingerclicks on bbdc, and i saw the verse, 'unless the lord builds the house, we labour in vain' and i felt bingo -heart sank further- its just like that. and i dont even know why im repeating it to myself cos it just drums the facts in deeper, but aiyah, i just need an outlet. im so :[ ;[ :( (insert weary, disgruntled, yet-i-still-hope, stop-telling-me-its-easy, sigh emoticon)
-
what does it mean to be the best of myself? i guess i would have to be happy, since thats what my name means. and it applies to everything, in the fight against middling mediocrity. i mean, of course there may be things im just average at, but i shouldnt settle into my shoes and sit in my hips and settle for it. if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again. and then i can reassess if i am meant to spend my time wading through all the mediocrity, or re-divert my attentions and energies towards something else.
-
how the new philosophy works:
1. not on blackmail.
2. on continued conviction.

i told my friends i would repent from my slow or sometimes non-existent sms replying, and actually TRY to reply promptly. but the sms ahlee sent me last night just stumped me; so you can't jolly well expect a reasonable and prompt answer to a shocking statement. she is often either too deep or too full of nonsense, that girl. n i could rattle on about this "philosophy" but it is so much common sense i'd rather not, and leave you to find out your own philosophies about your own lives.

-
by the way, transformers rocks.
by the way, what does this phrase mean? what way? what is by it?
i think i am going mad. somebody help.

just to break the silence

take me somewhere/whisk me away
on these glass-slippered feet/ treading lightly on fragile dreams
cos its about to be midnight/ and hope is seeping away into these hidden rags/
while the shimmer and sparkle of gown and shawl dissipates;
but a dance with you would be/
as miraculous as a walk on water.

this hiatus has been.. because i use other mediums other than this blog. blogging denotes a sense of boredom for me now, and that means the output tends to be more negative sounding than i usually feel, because well, boredom just clouds over a pallid sky, and the world has caught a flu and there remains only a blur of experience, of masked smell and dulled sensation of the skin, of dilute taste and blocked hearing; bored eyes that perceive the world lack a certain sparkle.
-
happy birthday jacjac. :) u add sparkle to our lives. kind of like the woh ringleader, but we let you unlead sometimes, just cos leading aint always that fun.
-
n gerry i loved talking to you on sunday, so without airs and without veils, so natural like we've been doing it for years. and i know the words we exchanged in confidence wont drop further or ripple beyond, even though we didnt say 'dont tell this to anyone', because because i dunno you get to a stage when you just start trusting, you dont ask if the floor will hold, you just stand.
-
now, now, i just need clarity, and i need time off for myself.

house of mirth

pau with happy calamari rings, bello with panna cotta and JINGO WHOS BACK!!

hockey cheers- of a very different kind!

i think bello's part finger was over the lens in this one. causing our half-obscurity.

--
She allowed herself to listen to their mental processes, the crude vulgar words which she herself could not descend to, yet the truth of which she could not deny. Her mind lingered on the edges of such crude thoughts, yet she dared not step past the threshold and release her own adroit mind to the meddling of such base weaponry, lest her whole person be poisoned by the trade.

so, we went to maxwell food market and was kind of disappointed at the unsingaporean fare they served. it was jingo's first night back in singapore, and the orluak looked rather like the chaitaokuay, pau's watercress soup was too full of the veggies she disliked, (which unfortunately soaked up the soup which she DID like), and munloh and i were subject to porridge because of potential wisdom tooth extraction and flu respectively.

but things got better, and pau especially was acting a little drunk even before we headed to timbre, SUCH was our delirium at seeing each other after so many months, scattered like Babel-ians across the globe to Italy, Chicago, London and three of us to random preoccupations in Singapore. We went to timbre to see Mr. Siva in his band EIC and were glad we went on the correct day and managed to see him. Not that we took much notice of him, we were too engrossed in our talk and too blocked by the fat tree trunk which stood in between his head and our eyes in a most inconvenient way.

i've been tuitioning my cousin for the past two days, and involving myself with rag. but today i took a sabbath from rag and just stayed in bed and read for the later half of the day and slept, before i went to visit the doctor in the evening. I have orders not to sing and not to talk too much to prevent excessive strain on the throat. hahahaha. well well, seeing im supposed to lead worship this week, that'd require godly intervention wouldn't it? i Am looking forward, then. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2Cor12:9
for the conversion of weakness into a glory not mine!

ive just been reading Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, and completed it today. She's a perfect genius with words, and so many of her phrases just struck a chord in me. 'Struck a chord', now, thats a phrase she'd never use, because it is an overused cliche. So bin the cliches, and let us stretch language to the full height of its potential, discarding our lazy expressions, the saggy couches of stock phrases we sink in so comfortably for want of mental exertion, words used too much they have emptied themselves of meaning.

i wrote a lot today, since it is my preferred medium of expression, and since i have a convenient order by the doctor against the medium of speech. but i have had to censor myself, and the bits which are publicly air-able are pasted here in fragments, inspired randomly by the powerful, swaying eloquence of Wharton's words.

The barriers of self-preservation, of social conduct and proper etiquette stifle like a corset. In the properness of how things are done we lose ourselves, we lose the raw integrity and blundering honesty of our souls, we betray the human longing to reveal our inmost thoughts. Why do each and every one of us keep up the charades?

How finely we keep the icing on the cake, the sheer veil of chocolate powder over its surface, the spread of gleaming cream evenly smoothed, when all we really want to do is stick a finger through the pie and taste the inside. No, we deny our tongues the delight, the temptation to animal frankness subdued under stuffy coats and stiff jeans, feet pressed into pinching high heels, faces plastered by make-up compacts, hair fixed by moving rubber- giving the guise of movement and gaiety, but in reality enslaved and attached by the root to a range of fixed positions. What flinging aspirations transfixed by the immobility of circumstance, what wild indulgences anchored and moored to stumpy posts of responsibility and restraint!

dad told me today i should rest instead of running in an out of the house. i would rest more, except that i refuse to nurse my sickness more than is necessary. my sudden eloquence or verboseness now is caused by a drugged wakefulness.

I slept the day hours away, and now wakefulness has come back to haunt me, the promised drowsiness of medicine falling short of their projections, or proving too weak to the accumulated force of release, the current of my words sweeping away all resistances to their flow.

I spent the day nursing my sickness, though I think I shouldn’t. it’s the sort of thing like a blister on your finger, the more you stare at it the bigger and redder it seems to swell, or like the nursing of a grudge- the eyes loom and magnify the excesses of a thing originally small, till it grows to fill the edges of your vision, and becomes the central focus, the centerpiece of an immovable bludgeon, the one prone to blind you to everything else. But what do sick people do but lie down and rest? And if that is no remedy but instead a catalyst for illness, it is no wonder then that so many people in the world are sick. We have all been, for generations, grooming our own diseases in the backyards of our lives, planting the weeds to the demise of our own crop!

--

most times i refrain from letting words leave my mouth, because they tend to assume lives of their own, along the curve of an evolutionary trend much devolved from my preferences. Like God, I presume to speak them into being, except, unlike God, I cannot be sure of their being made tangible. And the failure thereof will return to smite me with redoubled mockery, the mockery of my hopes, a public flogging. Better to leave in the dusk of secret wishes and hints of light in the cavern of mystery and darkness, than to leave glowing trails leading nowhere but the recesses of a dead end within the cave.

aborted tongue.

while attempting to do my weekly room clearance [the weekly felicia thing], i came across last year's organizer, which attempted to categorize my disjointed thoughts into separable days and months. then i came across a snippet of writing (edited), which i was quite pleasantly surprised to find. it's like finding money in your jeans pocket. it smacks of a political-something, like i had a gripe against society, which is now lost, me being the apathetic/contented/disinterested/bribed singaporean:

(.aborted tongue)

the nation speaks.
thrown together,
like ingredients onto a pizza crust
surprised at each other.

cast into the scorching oven
of war and battle, melted memory
gluing us in place.

how we struggled to form speech, to burst
through our swollen, pregnant, long-accustomed
muteness-
speech, the question marks left hanging
that tilted sideways
and hooked together the
fragments of us.

but all we could stutter in naive lisp
was a half-
tongue, a conjoined hybrid
of languages-
singlish.
that was all we had,
all there was to remove,
and they did it.

one successful campaign,
like the stop-at-two birth controls;
but babies unborn are
they are babies dead.
dead are
aborted into a wasteland of the Nation's rejects
like unfinished sentences where meaning once-survived

their uncried screams, unfalling tears, unspent kicks
adding to the jumble of a (struggling) unbloodied birth.

-

on the long journey home from east to west after the planetshakers concert, i got a chance to talk to aaron and amos. they asked if i was 21 or 22 years old, i said 20.
'wow. ok.'

'why? how old do i look?' (fine, shoot myself in the foot. question to avoid, if in doubt.)

'uh.. about 26 or something. or 24.' - aaron.
'you DIE.'

hahaha. TWENTY-SIX!

muteness

"diaries are records not of fullness, but of emptiness."
and i agree absolutely. the reason i do not write, is not because my mind's a blank. far from it, it is too full i do not know how to unload it, and i can't actually, really, unload, unwind, unleash. there aren't enough ears and there aren't enough words and i aint enough trust.
-
somehow the most precious thing i could give to a friend is not hugs or sweets or advice, but trust. because it comes so rarely with me, my inner clockwork mechanisms run on suspicion or guardedness or something. trust dont come easy. now i sound like scrooge on a hypersensitive, excessive paranoia homerun, but arent you wary, too? guess im just made like that. ive always had a few close friends rather than a heapload of hibye acquaintances, and secrets are secrets kept for life. and i get irritated when people tell me to keep secrets and i keep them for years only to find they went around telling their secrets to other people themselves hahaha. prfft. bummer. but i digress. why TELL when others cant understand, cos they cant see that specific angle of things which only you in your unusual position among friendships stand, why be honest when itll hurt or confuse others and not help yourself? and thats the reason for the silence. all the thoughts jamming up the machine and not given utterance.
-
i'd much prefer writing in verse,
cos i can be honest in the cryptic-ness of it.
and honesty is very important, when opportunities to be so are so rare.
and you should always be honest with yourself.
-
choice is such a difficult thing, because it never ever comes alone.
first, memory and experience are baggages of the past that unpack themselves very slowly, so they tend to tag along.
next, there's responsibility and expectation that weigh on your neck and prod you this way and that.
third, choice is a string knotted at two ends, in the heart and in the mind, and the weight on the string jerks up and down in an unpredictable flux.
fourth, choice mates with fear when the future is unknown- fear of regret, fear of not knowing.
but choice also hooks up with faith for the Believing because that unknown future necessitates it- and faith and fear collide like disoriented, slippery fish in the ocean.
so you see, choice is such a big thing coupled with other things imposed on one space, ONE position to fill. (thus arises the concept of opportunity cost)
-
i wish i could cut the chase and just SPEAK SIMPLE UNDERSTANDABLE WORDS but i cant i cant i cant.

picture bang

thanks swimming capped people! zhon n ahlee wore their swimming caps in changi airport then popped up and said hi to me. i couldnt stop laughing. they looked ridiculous! haha. <3

here's proof that i got your stuff from korea!

that funny looking thing is an orea wafer stick! you should go try it. yum.

just some random rose bush in korea! i dont see anyone taking photos beside singapore's bougainvillea bush!

i like the shadow.

cool right. i took it! hahaha

'smile, dad!'

random SUNFLOWER field. twas gorgeous.

been so long since i last blogged. korea! well, here are a few of the 947 photos i just uploaded into my comp. i think ive contracted chronic lethargy or something. haha inertia to do anything. well.
now that ive uploaded so many pictures and neglected my msn friends long enough, its time to let the pictures do the talking and sign off. be back... next time. when i have less to think about and more to say.

three accessory exploits

all that glitters is gold. all that fritters is banana.

yay! so fun. just being at home and creating things. my family's flying over to korea tomorrow night! i cant wait. though.. im not sure im expecting anything. its the suspension of expectation i guess, so i can be surprised later. so i didnt go research on what i'd find there.. you could call it plain laziness too, i guess. yes, anyhow i was arguing with kevyn online yesterday because he said blogs are lame. haha, ironic, coming from him. and if you overcome your fear of blog lameness and actually do read this, have a good trip kev! well-equipped with 20 books, lifetime supply of uniball pens, hifi and macbook pro, can lah. got beng and esther to keep u entertained for a short while, no? make many golden friends there and find your secret secluded multi-purpose rock, and if you're bored.. well, you could try blogging. haha. see you in __ months time.

KOREA! maybe i have an idealised perception of it, but well, what are holidays if not ideal illusions? and just in case i dont blog tomorrow, see you in 8 days, friends. uhm, or after 6 june when i return from the Palace of the Golden Horses. See? more illusions and fantasy.

below are excerpts from Jean Cocteau's Preamble-
the good thing about reading something you dont fully understand, is that you can dissect a part of it, and lift it out, and not hurt, because in your mind there is nothing left behind to weep for.

Let's get our dreams unstuck.

Greetings
I discard eloquence
the empty sail
and the swollen sail
which cause the ship
to lose her course

it's your foot
of attentive satin
that I place in position
pink
tightrope walker
sucked up by the void

to the left to the right
the god gives a shake
and I walk
towards the other side
with infinite precaution

----
i walk towards you, with infinite precaution

so i arrange the parts of my life carefully
to assemble a whole.
but the bits keep coming, whirring to be added on
the belted confectionery of production,
and like a factory labourer i keep going.
unless i see the end there is no end, my hands do not rest.
so let me see- that stationary point which does not move further each time i approach
that axis that does not shift with perspective
that absolute you.

i just need my dreams to be unstuck-
the bottle unstopped
for reality to flow.

fishing for warmth

the day the rooster crowed, it was cold. and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. an ordinary man, too, stood in their midst, warming himself. but the fleeting flames cast brief shadows upon his skin only, their transient warmth not penetrating beneath the surface, where the heart was gnawing in a wintry cold. it was colder than it had ever felt before, and huddled in a crowd of faceless people, this man knew the chill of owning a face, wielding an identity, but trying desperately to lose it.

it was not that his heart had turned cold, but it was true that a thin, white crust of fear had crept over it, a fear that ate into his bones and into his conscience. it was an uncertainty which kept his feet shuffling, a nervousness that made his teeth shiver and a dismalness which kept his head bowed in disgrace.

images fastforwarded their way through his mind- barrage of thoughts, accusations, memories, like bullets racing and tearing their way through mental paths. in this jungle of confusion there was one voice which held so still, which felt so real, and for all its reality and earnestness seared deeper than any shifting image. it was his own. which he now tried to estrange from his mind, but could not. the more he tried to stifle it down with pillows of denial, the more it struggled and kicked, kicked and pressed into his consciousness.

"Lord, why can't i follow you now?
i will lay down my life for you!"


Lord, i can't follow you now. no, i will not no not betray you. greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends! you are my friend, you know that i love you. oh but, but. i am so afraid.

"didn't i see you with him in the olive grove?" a voice cut through his thoughts like a knife, sharpened thrice over. it ran through him mercilessly, it silenced his thoughts, froze his memories, pierced his centre. why is it so cold outside here? you are behind this door, and for the first time since i met you it is a door i dare not go behind. the waters did not deter me, but this door- it is so heavy, it is a kind of death. why cant i love you enough to be unafraid?

i'm sorry.

and at that moment a rooster began to crow. when his heart couldn't take anymore it was a final arrow, a final breaking of a lacking thing so that wholeness could be arranged, pieced together, made new. beside the ashes of a dead fire, whose flames in a foreign crowd only chilled and could not warm, peter's tears fell to the ground and soaked up the dust.

---

i think we often turn to things for warmth when the cold is not merely an external thing, but an internal one. but inner chills are not warmed by gloves, mittens or scarves, nor by foreign fires. such cloaks are threadbare and insufficient. and what warmth does fire provide amidst false company and torrential wind? peter waited in the courtyard, trying hard not to be himself, trying hard to lose himself or lose his fear- he did not know which.
but what he sought in the fire lay elsewhere, in a place after the time of loss and grief, after the time of waiting and release, after the time of questioning and doubt, a place at the end which wraps up the beginning.

peter the fisherman learned, again, how to fish.

he cast down his failure, lack and brokenness and pulled up the rest of his life.

he recognised the voice which asks a question-
that same voice which asks that same cutting, searching question today,
and he said, "Lord, you know that i love you."
'

john 18:18
'it was cold, and the servants and officials
stood around a fire they had made to keep warm.
Peter also was standing with them,
warming himself.'

john 13:37
'Peter asked, "Lord, why can't i follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you."

john 21:5-6
'Friends, haven't you any fish?'
"No," they answered.
He said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat
and you will find some."

john 21:17
'Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time,
"Do you love me?"
He said, "Lord, you know all things;
you know that i love you."

take the wheel

in the car
the air was caked and brittle
and silence threatened to fall apart in crumbs of tears
so much to say
and so much left unsaid.

the unspoken words unspent themselves
unravelling in stagnant time
like single threads fraying from wool
fraying always occurs alone.

who's to speak,
and who's to listen?

there is a kind of closeness that is too barriersome
a kind of buffer that cuts too close.

more than enough baskets

new feline blogskin. hopefully it provokes more incentive to blog. lime green is supposed to be a creative colour! i think.

A fish once asked a wise man what she needed to do for her life to be filled with meaning. He replied, 'Give yourself away. Death comes to all, but few die giving, and even fewer give life in their dying.'
She kept that in her heart, until one day she was caught within a fishing net while swimming in a lake. The sun beat down hard upon her and her gasps were expended in the final flaps of her fins. But despite her flailing might no relief came from the heat, no swirling waters came to comfort and soothe her thirst. As she lay dying, she thought, 'it is time to give myself away.'

--

She remembered her conversation with the old man, his kind, worn face smiling.
"But if i give myself to different persons I can never be whole again."

He replied, "I only ask that you give yourself to One. The heart is small, indivisible, and is most precious when it is most singular. At all times your heart may belong only to one."

"What will happen to me if i give myself? Won't I still be torn apart apart and lose myself?"

He shook his head and said, "Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. What you give away to touch another's heart is that which cannot be lost; you become spirit, and in your dying give that person life by remaining in his heart for as long as he lives."

The fish nodded and went on her way.

--

Now, as she stared up into the blue sky, the light dimming slowly around her, the face of a young boy dawned above her. Here he is! she thought. The one i will give my life to. She whispered to him, "take me with you! i cannot keep my life, but i will find myself if i lose my life in your hands." The boy was the son of a poor fisherman. He picked up the fish gently with both hands, and she flapped her last and died.

Carrying his basket, the boy looked afar and saw many people gathered on a hillside. The boy had no brothers or sisters to play with, and his father was too busy fishing to be disturbed. He was used to being by himself and eating alone after these years. Who were those people? Didn't they have to work, too? Why were they there? Drawn by curiosity, his footsteps treaded lightly over rock and sand paths, until he found himself at the back of the huge crowd, trying to peer over their shoulders and look between their hips at who was talking. Dusk was falling, and still the people did not budge. Settling on mats or on the grass, they listened intently to the Teacher, telling stories they did not fully understand but were amazed by. The Teacher, noticing the darkness, turned and told those around him, "Give these people some food." At this time, the boy had crept to a bush behind the Teacher, listening to his every word. The teacher's students started exclaiming, it is impossible! How do we find enough food for all these people? He can't be serious, surely?

The teacher was not fazed despite their worries. The boy stared intently at his face as he asked 'who has any food?' There was something in the teacher's eyes that spelt a calm knowing, something in his smile that did not worry. Even when his students' faces creased in protest and dismayed at the growing crowd, the teacher's expression did not change. "Who in this crowd has any food?" The boy stood up slowly, and the bush he hid behind rustled. The teacher turned and gave a smile. "Do you?"

The fish said, I give myself to you, that you might eat me and live.
The boy said, I give what i have to you, just as i was given.
The teacher said, I give to whomsoever is hungry and weary. Open wide your mouths, and I will fill it. Give me the little you have, in spite of your lack, and I will multiply it. I give myself to you, as I myself have been given, that you may eat and drink of me, and live forever.

And there were 12 baskets leftover, all of which were collected, none were allowed to fall to the ground. No offering is too little or too much, nothing in part that cannot be made whole, nothing too perfect that it cannot be broken and spent, nothing too precious that it must be withheld, nothing too worthless that it is not heartfelt.

For it is not only what you have, but what you lack, which is a divine gift. The lack which supplies the need for faith, the need for grace, the space to give and receive. Without lack, there is no need for overflow.