Thursday, October 28, 2010

Yesterday I learnt the true meaning of EPIC FAIL. It was spectacular to the point of speechlessness.

I am stunned. At self.



Really? Is it that repulsive? Wow.

Monday, October 25, 2010

My thoughts are not truths.



And that is an important distinction.


The mathematician is perplexed. The recipe book has been followed to a tee. All the measurements and the calculations, right down to the 10th decimal. The forecast should portend the future. But it did not.

And he does not understand. Why, an every single level. When his' was superior, on every single level. Yet the formula and concoction still never works. It fails, time and time again. The experiments tire him. With every one, more questions and hypothesi, and randomisations and variations, they cloud his judgement and mar his findings. Yet he cannot discover the error, the one wrong step in the formula, which blew everything to bits. To not.

Maybe its systematic. Maybe it's environmental factors. Maybe this ingredient or that, wasn't good enough. Again. Maybe the problem...was the mathematician all along.



Maybe he is the error.

Maybe it's not a bad idea to put the lab to rest, finally.

---------



Because you were made for other things than this.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

There is a ball forming in my chest cavity. The kind that precedes anticipation, harks of future paths and doors you might find unlocked. But I need to clip these wings so ready to beat and fly. Tighten the leash and reel in my string. My gut tells me things that perhaps, would be better for me if I didn't hear them.

I feel like creating. Maybe it's in my nature, to effect things. But maybe, maybe, I should just wait for the universe to paint itself around me as I stay still.

Funny how the weather and the sky has such meaning for you. Sauntering amongst the curve of grey cement, down the campus green of my fleeting school. I'm leaving you in a few months, and somehow, the ache is already there. Not just for the concrete and the four walls, the fabulous library and gym and the beautiful bodies and admirable intellects. No, but for all the things that academia represents. All the trivial, trifle, little things, the non-issues and the pathetic worries. The crush to do work of absolutely zero real world impact. The shuffling from class to class, seat to seat, open laptop, facebook for 3 hours, close laptop and unplug. Recycle and loop this same rhythm for the next 2, 3 lessons, twice a week. Once in awhile, of cos, your instincts and nature compels that you lift your head to steal images and pine for that candy opposite you. To sigh inwardly past the transparent professor and his background noise. To wonder what it would be like, with a girl like you (or lately, a boy. Although with the girl and boy both in front of me, I always always turn to her instead).

As I walk through the cloud of memories, and camera reels on rewind, the colours today are a little hazy. The buildings are sort of murky, as though they were smudged. There is a thick, kind of sogginess in the air. Makes the colour scheme a little muted today. Although in my part of the world, the city center is always a brilliant spray of baby blue upon milk white and brocoli greens. And the wind lifts the corners of your lips. Today's a beautiful day in a beautiful school, filled with beautiful people. Singapore's own LA. Today's muted colours look faded. Like a photo from the past. After some time, those colours are supposed to fade and they are just reminiscent of what used to be. I was in the faded image of school today.

Back of the cab, the streetlights zoom by like markers. I don't know, can't remember exactly which point of the cab ride, did I suddenly feel this exhilaration. Maybe it's because the cabby has a habit of stomping on the gas after every green light. You feel the world pulled forward through your navel. And I remember being driven like that in the US. The picking up of speed and the child-like wonder as my eyes and mouth go O. And suddenly we're flying. Upon a red light, the car stops as if to ponder for a moment. And my mind follows its rhythm, slows to a crawl as it settles itself down to a rest. Acceptance and gratitude. The throbbing, dull feeling that any singular moment in life could be fully embraced and felt. Just feeling it was good enough, good enough to remind you of living.

There is paintball tomorrow. And a million people I want to meet soon and next week. There are projects and homework to complete (somehow these things will somehow resolve themselves. See how I've used 'somehow' twice?). If there is the possibility of softball, then that is all I need for next week to be amazing. There are futures not yet nailed down, not yet moulded and prodded by the workings of my deliberation. Makes me shift uneasily in my mind-chair. And I'm learning how to best rock with this boat.

Maybe it's not such a bad idea to wait for a current. After all.

Brick and mortar all around. The glass shiny, pleasantly blinding. The lines and the squares and the angles all sharp and precise. With a setting sun filtering between the vertical parallels, the orange spreading out in an arc. I stand between and cut a black shape of me in it. Stop and ponder, the word-machine in my head connecting the red with the red inside.

I used to spend afternoons that never ended, walking your grey floors, speckled with unmentionables. Surrounded by a palette of styles and histories. Quirks that was the norm. Pop into small establishments filled with pride and that special something. Sat upon high top chairs, squealing rotating cushion seats. Order myself a sandwich as the surly guy eyes me over. And always, the expected random conversation that springs from inattention. Suddenly, I'm part of this city's pysche. As I walk from your west to east, water to waters. See the ships as smoke runs after them. Hear the call of the horn as I trot down the hemisphere, bringing the night into an awesome spectacle.

I go to your lesser cousin, but the more edgy, undiscovered, overlooked. With the squat houses of 1800s architecture and shoebox stores. With their attics and their lofts filled with gems and dusty antiques. Drink that ochre chocolate in an artistic lifestyle store. Where for once, pretentiousness was believable. And I lapped up your Andy Warhols and your Annie Lebovitzes, with the DJ at his pedastal. And this being you, your Djs never fail to transcend.

In the Vs of the channels, where the cars filter past the stone mason that time placed eternal, I sit under canopies of lazy shades. Merged with the metal chair and trusting, loved you enough to close my eyes for rest. Valuables pressed tight underneath crossed arms, still. Danger was always a side dip I never poked my fries in, but it's there to remind me all the same.

When the artificial lights itself, and your spaces go black, afternoons have morphed into the surreal night hours. The ones we never notice passing. The uninitiated, and the fearful, might find comfort and certainty in the brightest of your corners. Where Time and other joys are pigeon-holed into Squares, into conformity and mass market appeal. I chose instead to seek the underbelly. Dark, murky cafes. Stages with the ghastly spotlight upon a funny man. It's strange how people sneak up behind you, into my house through doors I never knew existed.

But that ship of war, with their buffet of planes and jets and helicopters. That stood like the lion guarding the gate of this city. The image of it, stamped permanent upon my film. The far end of the bow, where I curled and laid myself down to die. Finally. The breath held for days upon end, until the bubble was no longer containable. There were I heard grief for the first time in my own ears. Not saw them in words, or felt them. The clueless but human, whose voice reminded me of the world. Yes, it still exists and I am in a wonderful, magical place. About turn from the grey seas so apt of my mood, and you see the man-made mountains rising before you, and I'm thinking.

From 12 hour jamborees, musical drugs that plug the brain, from the quiet, numerous intellects that leave you astounded, from the array of art and talent and creation spun from joy, inspiration, sheer genius. From the smoke giants rising through sinkholes, from the jagged zigzags of the ladder making its way up the building, from the top of your steel heights, and the maze of your undulating greens. From the deepest recesses, to the opening and discovery of new things.

To die and be reborn in a place like yours. To owe you. This experience, this memory.

Yes I do owe you something. And there will be days, there will be days, to lie upon my bed and long to be back there. To be walking your streets, arrogant youth uncaring for danger, thirsty soul longing for experience. To defy and to rebel, to wherever the next turn, corner brings.

To find solace in the arms of a city.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Flat. That's the word for now. A strange, neither sweet not sour, a tepid taste in the mouth. Like murky liquids, the surface opaque, particles obscuring the core. As the bubbles and dots cartwheel and revolve about timeless timeless glass. I stare but without patience to see it settle. Still staring, but not invested. Not reacting, just observing.

I've seen life encapsulated within a snow globe. Seen the fallout from having your world shaken carelessly. Seen the pathetic calming of dust, and the silent aftermath. And the quiet lament. The garden gnome stares back knowingly, eyes foretelling what my gut already knows. While a million cells away, the mathematician calculates with astonishing fervour, the answers to new equations. But he can't cure cancer, still.

Life is on screen-saver mode. As the technicians rush behind closed curtains. Tracing it to the source. Troubleshooting. Defragging. Erasing all the unneccsary cookies and files left from previous installations. Making way for new memory. Patching.

There is a time for everything. A time for gain, a time for loss. A time for you or yous. A time to play or fret. A time to wrestle and a time to relent. A time to wait and a time to hesitate. A time for purposeful hurt and a time for wasted grace. A time to grow cold, and a time to learn warmth. There is also a time to live your life, and a time to observe it.

Now is not the time for doing. I'm going to throw a fistful of grass, and see where it falls. And I'm going to pay, very, very, careful attention to the instincts and the motives and the knee-jerk reactions. It's time to be your own subject.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

"But here I lie on my own in a separate sky" -- Coldplay


I am writing less in the other blog. That is a huge sign of improvement.

The problem with eloquence and being articulate, is how much life you can give to pain. And so you conjure this time-eternal sandcastles of past memories, hurts and pains. Frozen in place and picture-perfect pose. Reading it is as good as revisiting it for real. Writing is like silently screaming, sometimes.



I want so badly to believe. I do.


But you can't discount history, and you can't just run on empty.

Monday, October 04, 2010

The mind is a cage, and we're its animals.