self-prescribed melancholia

2012-01-02T21:12:00.000-08:00

One of those late night, struggled articulating this piece. I admire Shakespeare's vision of tragedy. This is based a little on King Lear. I don't usually write commentary pre-blog post. I do think that there's a deal of obscurity in my personal writing. How do you describe life after death? Perhaps Shakespeare describes it best in this play (I have yet to read Macbeth). Really the challenge for me is in trying to describe what is not always there. -

Karma found me
somewhere in Japan
at the intersection of peoples,
they call transit.

Shakespeare had the better of it
in the end it comes to nothing.
An hour, fifteen minutes –
fame, fortune -
nothing.

2011-12-04T23:37:00.001-08:00

All beneath is empty
a lack of privacy
we hang our skirts to dry
as we bask in the sun

You look so fine
I want to make you mine
beneath all that’s empty
as we pine for the sky

Why do you love me?
beneath all’s empty
Didn't you run away
when we were both caught naked?

2011-12-04T23:08:00.001-08:00

Ending with letting go,
You look so fine
I want to make you mine.

Let’s pretend happy end
You’re taking me over
Over and over.

~Garbage, “You Look So Fine”

2011-11-14T01:10:00.000-08:00

[Because all of us can say things that are hurtful and racist, I would like to plead patience from readers who read and might be offended tone of this piece]

This is part of a longer story. I say it begins with a black kid born in Brooklyn and it ends with him dying. I say he’s black because I was taught to call him black, African-Americanism unapplied, his ‘blackness’ is more than a color of skin, a matter of internals. I hope I do not detract from the subject. This is only part of the story. What I see I do not know fully. The blood that runs beneath his skin I know is the same color as mine, but when we bleed we do not bleed the same! They say the soul of a black person if different from a white person. Since I am neither black nor white my soul must be different from both, but anyways, such state is inherited from pasts bloody, ill and unfortunate. Why am I telling this story? America is not my country nor should it concerns be mine. The black kid from Brooklyn is my story because put himself there. That I would have gone through the dance studio to learn African dance and music and exited a more cultured person, he stopped me, now a grown man, no taller than five and a half feet, stooping low to look down on me, “WHY ARE YOU HERE?” he asks. I cower, into the corner designated for the ignorant international student. I am but an unwelcomed addition into the American family, the African-American family. Why do I say that he dies? Because this story ends when he does. But this is only part of the story, the part I know, the part about me. As the rhythm of drums enlivened the beat, as feet dance, hands clap and heads sway with the music, the chanting begins, the surrender to Africanness, the crowd converts; heat rises from the earth, and the sufferings of men, women and children who bled on American soil with it. Then sweating, dancing and panting the black kid from Brooklyn, now a grown man begins to cry. His hands to his face, the tears come flowing. In that moment of a strange serenity as I watched him become one with the universe, I had my vision, but it was not pretty. The moment ended, later, after many hugs and kisses. No one kissed or hugged me that day, not the silent Malaysian kid huddle in the corner, watching, judging, learning.

2011-11-12T00:36:00.000-08:00

[work in progress] Back to me

We hung our hearts from the trees
..
The autumn sky is fleeting,
Running deep into the earth

The bobcats sleep through the winter
Waking between storms
And the dreams that burned
Like the sun beneath the earth

We don’t know right from wrong
Not yet, not this season
On the morrow when the winds blows
Our love takes flight.

2011-11-09T23:52:00.001-08:00

Dear Hannah,
Your lazy eyes
they do nothing to me.
Nothing to me. Nothing for me.

Again we're still here, why are we still here? The days are still growing shorter even though we stretch our words out to last.

I did not put my signature down. I did not sign off, 'Love always, forever, till tomorrow and the day after, till the day we said we'd meet, always and always'. I could not tell you my story of the ducks in Andrew’s Pond. I could not wish you well, nor could I see you, I cannot see you.

2011-10-18T23:41:00.001-07:00

I called you beautiful, because I like you
I like you, I liked you, I dunno.
Where are the pretty boys and the pretty girls?
Waving the pilgrims off on their journey,
To Zion!
Do the signs tells
that we all bleed alike?
Your face in my hands
touching - feeling: breathing I take you in
Into me.

2011-10-11T20:26:00.001-07:00

I drew little hearts behind my ear.

2011-10-11T20:24:00.001-07:00

Anxiety do me best, when I am about to cry; on the sea, on the boat, looking for dolphin fins.

2011-10-01T20:07:00.001-07:00

I watched as feet danced in my head. It was a quickstep, I think. You know I really wouldn’t know.
Click clock click click clock clock tap.

2011-09-18T11:35:00.001-07:00

My shit is black from wine, or is it blood? Both leave my body leaving me a little lightheaded.

2011-09-12T22:59:00.001-07:00

In the city fortress, between the skyscraper forest, we held hands with the criminal that walked the street.

2011-09-12T22:45:00.001-07:00

Your crazy eyes,
they walk right through me,
dancing unperturbed.

2011-09-12T22:12:00.001-07:00

To walk on water, I leave my body behind; threading lightly along the edges of a Another bigger than mine

2011-09-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

Life loss me, took with it my vitality
took my marrow, took my skin
..
vanity is all left me.

2011-09-04T12:16:00.001-07:00

“Go boy go!” they say. So I go.

We don’t go through these days, through lands and forest, but over. Over our heads the birds fly, bringing with them the scent of foreign lands. They say when they reach, “The trees are different, they change color with season”! But if they were to look around at all the other birds in the sky, only they had feathers blue, yellow and tropical purple.

What brought me here? Was in the whispers of paradise, or the wind which blew? Whispers and wind, they came from the East and left us all unsettled and dreamy.

2011-09-03T21:38:00.001-07:00

Your crazy eyes
they chase me across the room
peeving me silly.

2011-08-24T11:46:00.001-07:00

\the tramps are jumping off the highway, free falling down its web . we watch them from our windows, praying we’ll outrun the storm.

2011-08-24T11:15:00.001-07:00

We were selling cats by the dozen,
and then there was competition.
We filled the streets with cages
till not a single bird could touch the ground

2011-08-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

The idea of you, a little surer than the uncertainty that followed
“Am I in love?” I speculate? With no one to guide me to the answer but myself
Definitely a boy phase, we think
Who would know otherwise?

2011-08-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

Where do I start? I usually don’t try, I don’t make it. It never ends because it never begins. Usually becomes consistently, and now it is always. Always. I don’t write, and I always ask Why?

I am whole, person disconsolate, on the verge of (I don’t know) tears, grief, change? yet safe. I found a monument at the end of space, and though I know not where I really am,
I feel just fine.

2011-01-31T22:15:00.000-08:00

thoughts expand far out
imaginative space in collision
I prefer not moving
to avoid the friction.

2010-11-28T16:37:00.001-08:00

Home and peace of mind.

2010-11-26T00:53:00.000-08:00

I could hear the purr of the radiator, the murmurs it sent through the house, the creak of wood from the attic weighing on the ceiling. The breeze whistles the window. I feel the weight of his breath, moonlight on my face.

You told me that on nights like this you feel my consciousness expanding into space all around you, so heavy that it pushes you into the earth.

2010-11-26T00:42:00.000-08:00

my eyes are his eyes
and we see each other
staring at himself

epilogue –
when it finally stopped, he found himself. He found himself near the edge. Too near to a point of no return. Too far that he could not afford to turn around and just walk.

Running home, voices would speak to him. Delusions. They would stop eventually. But for now they persisted.

Home, I see you, down the road, above the the field, backed by gray hills. I am close. Soon I will be with my family.

I bring company, a rowdy room of voices. In my head, they're all in my head.

2010-11-23T22:25:00.000-08:00

Over-Cooked pre-Disposition.

2010-11-23T22:12:00.002-08:00

We were facing each other, our backs leaning on opposite sides of the door frame of your home church. A seventh grade girl was getting between us, asking me to pray for her - she would be the first person I ever declined praying with. But that’s not the point.

Something would get between us (I would trip over myself when I asked you out later that night). Later that night, you did not say no.

That was five years ago.

In five years I could... walk around the world twice! And have time to celebrate my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve!

I feel time moving has something to do with counting. One, two and three. One second, two seconds, three seconds. Count, keep counting. Time, keep moving. Wha e va u do dun stop mo ving.

If I keep this up for five years my head will turn into clockwork.

Tick tick tick.

Something is getting between us. I could count the distance between us in miles. But if you were to ask me to count it in inches, one inch, two inch, three inches... five hundred and two million, two hundred and twenty-one thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven inches, five hundred and two million, two hundred and twenty-one thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight inches... I might as well turn into clockwork.

I can count the years between us, but not the number of moments.

tick

Back to the night, when I asked you out. You did not say no, but neither did you say yes.

2010-11-23T22:12:00.001-08:00

“Rare please?”

But I always overcook my writings.

2010-11-18T00:36:00.000-08:00

Liedom - the world of lies.

2010-11-18T00:34:00.000-08:00

(This will have to be longer than a line. Me and my infamous one liners, in real life and here)

If I were to touch the index finger of your left hand with the index finger of my right, we are standing mirror images of each other. The only connection between us right now (besides common ground we stand on) is the contact between our finger tips.

If I were to breathe at that moment, I would feel you breathing with me, at the tip of my finger.

2010-11-18T00:29:00.001-08:00

Maybe one day the words of this journal will be a part of the flow of your bloodstream.

2010-11-17T23:59:00.000-08:00

This works better when I tell this to your face.

2010-11-14T00:44:00.000-08:00

I became afraid to write. Since you went missing, things changed. They finally got the drugs for my head right. I see clearly now. Clearly, I see clearly, I see that, that I miss you. And even when I forget to pray, my tears they try to say.

I miss you. All of you.

2010-05-31T21:48:00.000-07:00

at night I fall in love
whether in Bates College, or in Paris
yesterday feels like a moment ago
last year seems a moment ago

at this same place
at this same sight
was it yesterday?
or last year?

I fell for love
like a dead weight in mid air
head first
my hEart following

2010-02-28T21:46:00.001-08:00

It was cold last night. There was ice on the ground and ice in the air. I placed my hand on top of my chest to feel some warmth and to feel my own breathing. *inhale* *exhale* *inhale *exhale* Yes, I was breathing. But I felt cold inside.

I went outside and took my clothes off and lay on the ice. It felt like wet hardness kissing my skin with razor teeth. On my back staring into space and feeling my heart beat with my right hand, turning blue, all the while waiting for something.

Something?

Just something.

Whether it was for my heart to stop beating or for the ice to turn warm, I wanted something to happen. Maybe my consciousness would seep into the ice. Maybe my body would freeze and I would feel my soul leave me.

I waited, but nothing happened. So I put my clothes on, went to the shower, took them off again and took a hot shower. My body went into the shock from the sudden temperature change.

Later in my room, I went through the events of the night. I could still feel the ice, even though my body was now warm and snug under my sheets. I could remember the space I saw, the few distant stars that I saw which weren’t covered by not so distant clouds. But I could remember all my thoughts that night, but I could not remember why I did what I did.

I think it had something to do with being sad. But for the most part, it was trying to feel my heart which wasn’t really there.

2010-02-10T13:16:00.001-08:00

Francs on the street
I wonder if she fell there
Through someone’s pocket
And if that person knew
That he would be forever poor
Without her with him.

2009-09-04T13:52:00.001-07:00

I think the expression is ‘for fucks’. In my case it would be writing for fucks. (by the way, ever heard of a writer getting his book reviews from a hooker) It is a slap in my own face, sensible and austere me who does not believe in excess - won’t the world be a cluttered place if everyone were fully free to express their frivolous thoughts out and should anything/if not everything of no aesthetic/intellectual worth be burnt. Here I find myself, failing to grasp at words and my own person, and feeling the need to write for writing’s sake! I violate myself!

I am too hard on myself. But it stems from a sense of order, a perfection. And it drives me.

2009-07-26T07:44:00.000-07:00

Water like blood, runs in my veins. Both will suck dry when you have your way with me. Your lips to my neck, drinking in. All your hate and vanity flow inside.
Why do you try to turn me, change me into you?

2009-07-21T19:20:00.001-07:00

lol

2009-07-21T19:18:00.000-07:00

I have principles.

2009-07-21T19:05:00.000-07:00

The Left and The Right Are The Same.

The star are dim but complete. My mind stretches beyond the black horizon which falls endlessly into darkness. I turn my head. On the left I see the beach streaking all the way to the perspective centre. There are footprints on the wet sand, dark waves crash gently. My longing reaches out like a languid hand. I grasp at nothing.

I turn to the right. Candles burn, little glowering flames like stars burning in the sea. My world is turned on its side where flames burn sideways and my heart burns back. I stare, I focus. And slowly the lights etch their fingers on my eyes forever.

2009-07-16T10:49:00.001-07:00

There’s this little voice in my head
He splits my personality into two
I got it in my head that He once said
There is no dividing us two.

How do I know that He is a he?
Not another she which I sometimes think is me.
This gender thing, is a Freudian fling,
But I know my voice has a little penis somewhere.

Who is my voice, and what does he do?
He’s a part time botanist and a full time porn star
As you can see, not very literally
My voice is a divided person too

When you mix the two,
Him and his alter ego,
Me and him,
Me and you,
You get quite a bit of a motley crew.

As you can see, not surprisingly
WE (remember we’re talking about multiple groups here) have a little obstacle
Unless we can rid the two,
Him and Him
Me and him,
Me and you,
We are going to have a serious problem.
Some of us are not meant to be together

There's this girl inside my head
She splits my heart into two
I got it in my head that she wants said
There is no dividing us two.

2009-07-09T15:12:00.001-07:00

If I had free time, I would start my own religion. If I was someone famous like Jude Law I could name it after myself, Judaism...
Rats, that one’s taken.

Rule #1 for my unnamed religion - No killing people, period.

I would banish the idea of heaven and hell.
A perfect heaven is a flawed construct created by an imperfect human, usually the perfectionist who strives to exert his/her nature on life and life after.
Hell is just wanting everything bad that has ever happened to oneself, to happen on those whom that one can’t get along with, and worse.

If I were to become a follower of my religion, first I would spend many years in solitude, meditating. I’d have to break certain relationships and shirk certain duties for a while.

2009-07-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

My heart is beating, I am still breathing, but why am I so uninspired? I feel like the sun falling off the edge of the world.

2009-07-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

I believe my heart bends in the wind. Music and love rock my heart, but ill storms my heart too often. I am swayed between despair and dissolution, oh what serpentine venom. My heart is not made for strife.

Tranquility, it is a fools longing. Not on a comfortless plane of humans and their misery. And to long endlessly, that is a virtue only for the true lover. It is not easy to realise something for what it is, and to hate it for what its worth. Not when it is a self image.

It is not innocence lost, more a brute blade thrust through the cage and into the heart. And when deprived of all hope which would have lasted till tomorrow, I am made to beg on my knees for love which was meant for yesterday.

2009-06-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Pitching soul string forest fire swing boy feather connect heartbeat.

Move onto space spread out of wood.

Disconnection.

2009-06-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

This moment never last long. There is clarity. The buzz of alcohol is subtle, its weight has not moved from my belly to my head yet. There is freshness on the skin, on the lips. Kissing makes my senses light. The breaths of cigarette smoke after the shower tingle my lungs.
I am chemically complete. Intoxicated but only in the slightest, it’s the perfection of the balance that inebriates me.
Drunk on my toes, lifted up by my imagination hoping to touch a blissful height. But where does my head go?

2009-06-16T17:49:00.001-07:00

London was another one of those kinky ideas which didn’t materialize due to a short boner.

2009-06-15T18:18:00.001-07:00

My dear cousin brought it to my attention that when she read a piece of mine in Form 1, she thought it distasteful and highly pretentious. I said to myself then, “Bravo old chap. We both knew about the pretentious part! The least you could do was make it less conspicuous.”

I wonder, where our writing take us these days.

2009-05-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

Over, and around, beneath me, all things move in orbit. The dreamer hides behind his sleep, and wakes only to shake his limbs and feel them push and pull against the weight of gravity. I lie down over and over again, awake, sleeping, in dredges of monotonous stupor just to flail against the monstrous bulk of time and space, hoping that one day my actions will free myself from my ominous self-premonitions.

Escape. A many repeated chapter of my life, untold stories of world between stages of awakeness. A forever, between a fleeting life. Maybe my stories are my immortality, my godhood amongst mortal men.

I live in them, dream of them, dine with them.

2009-04-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

On the other side of a city

Home,
on one side of the city,
is where the heart is,
chasing trains,
chasing sunsets.

On this side of the city,
where the warmth is just right,
always a bath in sight,
A girl's love lives.

But where she belongs,
is where she dreams on,
on the other side,
when her heart IS.

On the other side of the city,
the right place for her to be,
chasing ecstasy,
chasing fantasy.

2009-03-25T23:01:00.001-07:00

What day is it? It smells of a waking spring, but what day is it? Or is it the smell of a passing winter?
How did I lose track of time? Did I, between slumber, fall asleep into a timeless dream and wake into a still day? The conscious ticking of time in my head has ceased. The pulse of my heartbeat has changed nor is there any more rhythm to my breathing.

Have things changed? How long have I been lost in a reverie?

2009-01-28T17:44:00.001-08:00

If only I could fully remember how I got here, to wake up from this forgetfulness and to know.

If I knew how long to wait, I could watch the clock turn as time brought you closer home to me.

2009-01-26T07:52:00.001-08:00

And the self (whatever that is), it loses its permanency, just like the rest of society. In circumspect, it is just a formless fetus who has yet to embrace his/her adult form, protected by the mum-god; forever blind, forever soulless.

If I knew how to be a baby, attuned to my more basic instincts, my most basic needs. (cognitive development? fuck that.)
Let the world take care of me, let my needs be whatever they think it should be, weaned when I am hungry, comforted when I cry

but to remember my sense of self

but oh, what a glorious delusion.

2009-01-22T14:20:00.001-08:00

Just to get words out.
words
Words
What’s the difference.

Today I woke up in bed with a girl. I got her out of the room and I went back to bed. And when I woke up again, I woke up alone.

It is some kind of need for permanency. I’ve just crossed out sexuality and companionship. Or maybe they both need to be more routine, to sink in.

Just the other day, I lay on my bed not wanting to get up. I turned the music up and let their melodies coax me to get up. When I woke up my, eyes traced around the room looking for something of my habitat to arrest my attention.
But I find my eyes searching for art outside of my window, an icicle melting in the sun, droplets of water forming, dripping. Isn’t that the same way the icicle was formed?
Droplets of water, forming, dripping.

First the artist has to survive.
Then..
Is the call of an artist, to be able to express him/herself or to be able to connect to others through their art?

I wanted a scarf.
She left a hairpin.

2009-01-16T14:40:00.001-08:00

I have a good mind. Why waste it on a whim, a notion called love.
But why does my heart feel otherwise.

Yet in this misery, I find a new strength.
One which carried me through
Harder times.

If I were to follow my heart
My body would be dragged along like a dead carcass
Across this path of romantic pursuit
Damn this road
Damn this pursuit
Damn this romance
Damn this life

2008-12-03T08:51:00.001-08:00

I would live life again, if I knew there was happiness at the end.
But I would not live the same day twice, for boredom would overcome me.

2008-11-25T14:22:00.001-08:00

I have one meal a day. If I wake up early enough, I have two. It seems that my food for the day depends upon the schedule I follow. Not one which I made for myself obviously, but one which people around created for me.
It means I sleep at night, and wake up in the morning. It also means I do something productive during the day so that during my conversations with people I have something to talk about.
There were times when I stayed up through the night and slept during the day. During these hours awake I found much self-release beneath the dark expanse of the night. And during the day when I slept, my daydreams met my nightdreams and they married. Their union became my imagination.
So I said to myself, “This is what I want. Freedom for my actions to roam in the mysteries of the night, and for my dreams to spin magic into my mundane everyday. I will live life like an adventurer and feel emotions in my body like a dancer”.
But that same day I died. When I set myself free, every single part of my being stretch out and merge with my universe. I felt the passion of every star burning in the night, I felt the pain of every single infant on earth crying, every single pup every single cub. My thoughts reached heaven, and body felt the earth,. But deep inside of me because I had never felt loved, the weight of everything broke my heart with sadness. And I died from a broken heart.

2008-10-26T22:35:00.001-07:00

Egos live longer than God.
The self dies.
Dreams sustain life.
Longing goes beyond.

2008-10-26T22:24:00.001-07:00

And all the joys in life.
Mirth, passion and sustenance
They no longer uplift my heart
To a point of contentment

It is as if a shadow has come upon them. My eyes are dull to their lovely hues and their shapes. My heart is no longer enraptured and from deep within, sadness comes; it overcomes. It drags me to a place of annui where I now live, my mind, my soul and person.

2008-10-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

I knelt down on the mock pews, my hands clasp together like one in the act of petition. I drift in and out of semi-consciousness. I feel my hands binding me. Rope tighten on my wrist and around my legs binding me to my wooden execution table, like a petitioner in his act of supplement.
There is faint music in the background, a church choir singing songs of Holy War. There are voices in my ear, loud and resonant in the enclosed sanctuary. My priest guides me in a list of My sins. I utter my recognition of my trespasses, but in my being I feel no guilt. The list goes on, and the recollections causes my mind to drift into the places of my childhood and my youth. My judgments are now read to me. My body is aquiver from the brutalities which await me. But from deep within, I draw a sense of calm.
The executioner now guides me in my confession and pardon. Soon when the heavy blades befall me. The first cut will sever my arms. The second will take my head and my legs with it. When my limps separate my executioner explains, the drawing of blood will cleanse my body and the mad pain I experience will blind my senses and guide my tongue to pray the final confessions in the sacred Tongues of the Angels; and my soul will be pardon.
I close my eyes and lift my heart upwards. My soul reaches out and beyond me for a place I have not been. I touch heaven and its radiant sun. I am detached from my body. Something mysterious and overwhelming comes over me. In that place, my soul filled with a song, and my physical body bound as it is, burst out in an angelic tongue.
No blood of mine is spilt, yet I sing like one redeemed of earthly and eternal judgment.

2008-10-20T15:05:00.000-07:00

I never knew that it was possible to feel this helpless. It is like trying to hold my breath, yet all life giving air escapes me. My lungs are filled with nothing, and all my feelings escape with the life leaving me.

~
Breathless
It isn’t like I’m not trying to breathe

~
The crowd is small
I like is this way
The faces are familiar
Their smiles I love

These are friends
I am amidst friends
But I am conscious of my laughter
It is distant and alone

I am alone
That what I feel
But really I am surrounded
By family, love
and maudlin

To call it pathos would be dramatic
Melo-de-dramatic
But isn’t it uncanny
To feel happiness and sadness
Tugging on the soul
And both tugs
Both pinches
Feel the same

2008-10-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

I have filled my candy house with many sweet things. Ooh tasty and lovely, chocolate coated with honey. Sweets and salties, sugar coated bunnies. Toffee, caramel, liquorice, jellybears.

My house is full
Its time to feast
But why? am I eating this all alone?

2008-10-02T22:44:00.001-07:00

If I had clay, I would make a doll. It would probably look like a bloated clay stick figure at first. But with practice, I get the proportions right. I will draw a face on its head, a smiling face to make it look happy. A nose and two ears I will add and two sapphire beads for its eyes. I will make some hair, long and luscious, amber glow. Then it would be complete. I will give her a name, and she’ll be my friend. We will play and sleep together. I will talk to her when I’m lonely, and she’ll fill all those empty places inside of me. Slowly she becomes less of a doll and more of a person. Slowly she comes to life, instilled with her own mind and personality. Slowly she becomes my sister, my blood and kin. Slowly I become less of me, and more of her.

2008-10-02T22:43:00.001-07:00

I suppress the violent anger. I colour my social asocialism with a smile. Part of me hates this place, another part knows that this is the only place I’ve got.
I can daydream my world. But the world dreams me.

2008-09-28T22:52:00.000-07:00

Far from home.
Where am I?
I do not feel happy.
There is no solace in this place.

I feel light on my skin
Butter cream colour all around the candy store
Fresh checked tiles on the floor
Chocolate, butterscotch and marshmallow filled dreams

What makes me happy
Sugar?
Or do I lie about my sweet tooth

Maybe bitter earth and scaling mountains are more my thing
I just hope that I can breathe at the top

Sour lemon fizzle
The champagne pours free
From the colours of makeup, down to the gloss of the boot
Fashion industry
So near, so far from me

2008-09-15T20:59:00.000-07:00

Beneath the sea,
A land upside down on its belly,
There is a place,
Where loves lives
And dreams exist.

I seek this haven,
Beneath God's heaven.

----

2008-03-09T14:24:00.001-07:00

I didn't like the idea of exerting my back throwing starfish back into the sea.

I once loved a girl. She told me that I could make the world a happier place by smiling at it. Change the world – that was everything that we wanted to do back then. So I told myself that if I learnt to smile at one person a day, that would be seven people this week.

Of course it was much harder than I thought it would be. For one thing, smiles did not come easy. But before I even taught myself to put on a single smile for even a day, I worked it out in my head that if I did two smiles a day, that would be 14 a week. Why even stop at 14 a day?

So I wore on my face a grimace of self-pretense and insincerity every moment of the day I thought someone was looking. Practice made it perfect, and I had lots of time to practice every day when I prayed.

The only time a grimace betrays itself is when you look at it in the mirror. You gaze at the pools of happiness swelling in the shallow depths of your eyes; your eyes trace down the bridge of your nose to the tip, slowly around the bends and contours of your face to your lips, and then you pause to grimace.

I once loved a girl. She told me that I could make the world a happier place by smiling at it. ----
I realize I did not want to change the world. I just wanted her to smile at me. I just wanted to be happy.

I don’t mine the idea of exerting my back throwing starfish back into the sea. But this whole smiling business while you’re doing it, who am I kidding exactly?

2008-03-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

I dreamt that death came to an end. And you came back to me. I did not remember the farewell I gave to you. But I didn’t need to. I was here to welcome you home.
But I dreamt that death was just another passageway that you go through. And after that you move on.
You moved on.
You were just here for a visit.
And I had to say goodbye again.

I miss you.

2008-02-16T12:22:00.001-08:00

And something inexplicable takes over me. All my thoughts and emotions are drawn into a strange focus, directed at something of incalculable worth and significance so profound which I cannot describe. It is as if all my life I was waiting for this moment, when destiny would seize me, or when destiny would write itself into a song, and sing itself into a melody which I could understand. I stand at the edge of sanity and existence, and contemplate the wonder which I have uncovered. I feel beyond myself with all my soul into a darkness beyond me which I do not understand. And I find myself longing for more.

2008-01-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

There are many labyrinths to the heart, different depths to excavate, different lengths to explore. I thought somewhere in my tunneling I would find my heart of hearts. I found something one day, or maybe I found nothing. Nonetheless it was a discovery, that in the fullest of hearts, there can still be emptiness.

What is discovery? Right now I am imagining open skies. I see colour in the horizon, but I don’t know what. My eyes have just grown so unaccustomed to the outside world. There should be a sun setting somewhere, but perhaps the sun is only there if we know what direction to look for it.

I guess plunging into happiness is like a leap into a new universe. Not something terrestrial in space mind you, but a different medium, a different substance perhaps, more like a different reality. One where everything is around is the colour of a glow, what ever that is. Perhaps happiness is not incarnate in a person or an event, but just a moment, fleeting, transient, elusive and sometimes hard to remember. It is a bit hypothetical at the moment, this whole happiness thing. I struggle at the easiest things sometimes =) like breathing, or relaxing or in this case being happy.

Depression is a place you build, a flat with closed windows, many living spaces in one building. You can live in many, the bedroom, the basement, underneath the stairs or inside the closets. Depression is your home, the walls around you, the water you bathe in. But you have to remember to open the windows on every floor, so at least you have a glimpse of the world outside when you remember to look.

There are many inhabitants in my home which I need to wake. There is the old man on his bicycle thinking of death before his time, there is the savant in the car crying because of the books he has not yet read in his lifetime. The twins are still dreaming, one dreaming of the da,y the other of the night. And there is also the fledgling monster who has yet to terrorise the dreamy kingdoms and the kingdoms of those awake.

2008-01-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

I used to believe that I have a purpose. It gave me a sense of immortality, significance and love.

It seems like the strain of humanity has invested itself in a God; a love drug, a forever and an adventure with a happy ending.

I vowed one day to embrace all of humanity and its god. I set myself on its highest pinnacle and stared down below to depth from which I had climbed from. It was strange but a realization dawned upon me. I realized, I missed the depths, the darkness, its wickedness and its adultery. Or maybe I hated this height, this pinnacle. I wanted to climb higher, maybe I needed to fly.

I plunge down from the height which I climb. Neither hand nor winds caught me as I fell. I fell into abyss, the darkest pit. I cried out for someone to come and reach me.

Neither man, animal or immortal came for me when I cried out for help. Nature cast its shadow on me, clouds covered my sky. I thought I fell asleep in the darkest of dreams. But then when the lightning flashed, I woke up to the despair of the nightmare all around me.

No guardian angel saved me that night, no loved reached down for me.

I lifted my head high to the clouds and rain and taught my eyes to see beyond the clouds and the stars. My soul grasped into the empty universe and caught onto nothing. But onto nothingness it clung to, and onto nothingness I pulled myself out of the pit.

I rose from the depth with no body or mind. But my will lived longer than both. I tied up my body to stop the convulsions and drugged my mind to sleep.

From there, I lived like a shadow of my past, devouring and feasting upon my old identity as a means of survival. When my body was strong enough, I fed it new food, song and story. I even gave it a new name. My mind, I filled with alien thought, thoughts which no longer believed in humanity or its god. Slowly I began to rip myself away from my old person. I lived my life like two people, one which was dying while another was coming to life.

Slowly I died, slowly I was born again. I was born one day, an adult, one which had no roots, no love and no purpose.

Each night I grope into darkness, learning my past through my memories. In the day I dream new worlds and new earth on which I could build my home. But each day I long for all the love that I lost, because none of it traveled with me through the fall, and through the rebirth.

2008-01-07T12:42:00.001-08:00

I have travelled far. Sometimes I think it has been a long road I have walked every night of my life. Sometime I think I have been carried all the way, sitting in the back seat, watching the street lamps and the rain drops go by. It has always been alone, this journey; not a curled up slumber party with my playmates, not a walk in the park with friends.

I am untouchable. It is like a sense of being ethereal. Like there is more to everything physically, and sometimes my emotions and thoughts transcend the ordinary, stored in another world. Sometimes I escape to this place; I find it dark, mysterious and forbidding often, but other times it is just a place of solace, nostalgia, dreams and comfort.

This is my play, this is my garden. One day I wandered too far, and never made it back. Maybe I did try, but it was overgrown and wild. Nature had taken its course I had not been there. I cried and screamed over what was lost, but it seemed more suited to ignore the child fantasies and to relate to others about what we all could see and touch together.

I have a friend. Her name was *__. She walked me home to my garden one day, and stayed with me as I cleared the wild which had grown. I stayed here after that, while she left.

Reflecting, I always feel two worlds crushing me as I side step between them, two walls spanning across eternity. Sometimes it is like empty universe where pools of liquid memory and fantasies float shapelessly in galaxies and solar systems at random. I wish I could merge every single one of them into a single entity.

I have travelled far. Sometimes I love every single moment of the journey. Sometimes I am uncertain. Sometimes I am just bored.

2007-11-18T01:14:00.000-08:00

To whom it may concern :- (people reading my blog)
This is a(my) blog. Not a confession chamber, not a diary. I do not really intend to go into any explications of what I do post on my blog.

I am also not going to post any of my daily activities any longer.

2007-11-18T01:09:00.000-08:00

This is rest
When the pendulum swings
And my eyes no longer watch
My heart opens
And I hear it
Move
In me

2007-11-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

I press harder, but skin tears easier when one is not deliberately trying to. There is a morbid intimacy between metal and flesh. Wars and vendetta are birth from its blood dance. But again, I still do not know how to make myself bleed.

I love Garbage. Their songs stain memory, and fill in the gaps where my own emotions don’t reach.

Right now, pain is something which does not reach the mind. It is stemmed while the stream of blood flows freely. She told me I would find release, somewhere between the next cut and the deeper incise the very same way she did. Both times she lied, or perhaps I’m just not her.

I hate the blade in my hand and my very body. They both reek of the physical and carry no life in either. I do not know when I made that separation of body and everything not; but either, I have problems loving.

This life is saturated with too many illusions. Can the mighty Creator dispel the cloud?

I am suffering from indolence. Atrophy has yet to seep in; however I fear demons which come, masquerading as angels. Don’t they realise I want them the very way they are.

Curse society, enough of its constructs. Stop trying to correct your mess. Do you not understand that I never wanted your government, your laws or your religion? Neither one of them are real; only the conflict which arises, only the tension which ensues.

There was a gull which carried the Sun on its wings. Each day it would soar into the sky, and fly towards the sun; hoping to alight one day on its corona. It longed to be home. Everyday the gulls set out on its quest, never tiring its journey. Till the day it died, every beat of its wings beat northward to the sun. The gull never found its way home. It never needed to.

I miss my cupboard, by my bed in the old room. I use to curl up in its dark corner every so often. I feared the dark, and its claustrophobic walls. There was a strange comfort in loving what I feared. Somehow I knew neither would abandon me, and leave me without feelings.

2007-10-24T10:52:00.001-07:00

I tilt my head back, my world screams into acceleration. I am bouncing rubber balls between my fingers. In both moments, more of me is motion, less of a person.
The train is here. I am on my way home. I am leaving Paris. I am home in Paris.
When sunlight filters through my windows, and cast his fingers upon my wall. I know my new day has arrived. My play time is here. It is not yet time to close my eyes.
Dreaming will come in the night, when the curtain is drawn and the shadows hung by my bedside. I will wake up soon, I know. That’s what mum says. Really, I don’t know what happens I dream.
The earth is drying, the colours are fading. The faces are dull, trees aren’t moving. It is time to dream, it is time to dream, flee from the mundane; in my head, in my head.
Curse the living. Damn the damned. I love neither.
But love me someone, for I am opening my eyes.

2007-10-15T03:49:00.001-07:00

I live between worlds separated by the dreaming, moments where I realise my existence played in a sequence of days.
There are the in betweens, moments when the mind takes over and the senses subside. It is a chasm between two worlds which I find myself falling into. It happens when I close my eyes. Dreams take over. They are my world, my universe.
And then I wake up.
I find myself stand at the edge of a gouge. The waking up has been long. The sun dispels the mist. I am stepping out into a new day, but what awaits me, but what awaits me?
I thought I should excitement from what is ahead of me, in the discovering, in the waking hours.
My worlds keep changing.
And somehow I love my dreaming.
Cause that is the only thing which stays unchangingly the same.

2007-09-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

I never dream of Paris.
I guess I left more of myself behind than I did, take back. Sure, pictures of the Eiffel and the Mona Lisa are somewhere in digital memory on my camera. But everything remotely sentimental of my overly-lavished emotional being is somewhere in transit between two vastly different worlds. But hey, PJ ain’t that bad?
(And for all those who didn’t know. I am back in Malaysia, and Germany was only a month thing)
Perhaps the only ‘drastic’ change that has occurred since I left my abode in Seremban, was the management which I signed up with, and the shift from Bangsar to Petaling Jaya which happened last week.
Utilities in 136 Jalan Limau Manis were falling apart. The landlord suspected violent-activity happening within his property. You know, the whole yuppies/students living together is really such a dodgy affair. “Maybe we’re supposedly humping the light tubes” I told Lainie.
Anyways, Lily and Rose apartments is not too bad  got named after the Harry-Ginny / Ron-Hermione daughters?

I never dream of Paris.
The idyllic city which I woke up to the moment I got off the midnight train. The morning had yet to rise, but the Metro was alive and she carried me to the many places of the fair city. I found Notre-Dame first, and spoke a thousand confessions and lies within its sanctuary. The darkness and silence were timeless within its walls but outside, everything was a dance. It was a phantasmagoria of culture, art and people; beauty sophisticated, scenic and mysterious.
There was the odyssey through its many streets, there was the pilgrimage at its many historical sites and places of interest. Nothing lifted me higher than the Ferris Wheel, nothing brought me deeper than the moment inside de Lourve. I lived a day in Paris, and everything was a single passing. And then I found myself in the same park. where the sun was setting for the second time. I realised I was about to say goodbye.
And I took the midnight train from Paris.
I still wonder why I never dream of Paris. Maybe Paris was the dream.

2007-06-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

So I ran into the field with my shadow tailing me. I clicked off my work boots and punk-rock-ed the tie. The toads of the field croacked(sung/hi-fied?) Scissor Sistors across the meadows, and the haystacks did a jig with the pitchforks still stuck up their rear ends.

The clouds turned a wine red and streams of gin came raining down soon. The drunken earthworms marched a gay parade to the nearby stream while the birds which landed near them handing out insurance policies.

The crocodile of the stream thought it was high time to show off his new Versace alligator-skin pants, and the water rat found it opportune to preach a sermon of repentance. So when the ladybugs propagated communisms, they had few ears except from the few enlightened hermit ants.

My shadow got high on hormones and drugs and eloped with the setting sun. The rotting cheese that rose in the sky after that crumbled into falling stink-meteoroids and deep-impacted Holland – so said wikipedia an hour later. Surfing the wireless from Starbucks which I found across the stream, I even got to purchase a few chunks off eBay.

2007-06-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Who are you?

You're familiar as rain, but I never get to see your rainbows. Somewhere between the drizzle and the falling torrents, there always is a reflection of you I never catch, something solemn, sad, something almost dying.

Why do you close your eyes? All the while I thought you were hiding your eyes from me. But somewhere between the moments of blind love and my opened eyes, I saw that you closed your eyes only to conceal the world which you shut behind those eyelids. Some place you hide in, drifting through and drifting out.

I love you when you smile. When you laugh, I think I hear my own from inside. I love you when we talk about our dreams and when we talk through the night about the night. I love it more when there are those moments when we just stop talking, and then, everything falls into stillness and I know we have each other.

I love it when you talk about the charity drive

Church

People

Love

But when you’re still sad, I don’t think I understand you anymore.

I love it when I look into your eyes. When I do, I see me.

2007-06-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

My social apology.
I apologise for being a conservative at one point and a liberal at another. I guess views change. I am probably more sorry for all indoctrination I contrived and imposed on my externals - society, family, friends, and everything else which is our common medium.
I apologise for broken promises. Like keeping the faith, friendship, dependability. I could try allocating blame to inadequate functional capacities, but who really wants to hear excuses at the end of the day.
I'm sorry for hurting people. I'm sorry for not having enough time for people. I couldn't balance my own emotions, and then I couldn't balance my own life.
I'm sorry I couldn't do half the things I wanted to do for half the people I knew and the rest I just did not do anything for. I found out eventually that sometimes I had to prioritise the amount of things I do. When it wasn't altruistic, it was either self-preservation or selfishness. Either how.
It could be longer, it could be more succinct. Like all other self-wanking, apologies are sometimes more self-indulgent at the end of the day?
Sometimes I'm just confused.

2007-05-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

There was once a world created as a mass of darkness. There were no planets and stars in its galaxy. Neither did it take any form or make itself distinguishable like anything we know. It was a world of dark water and a single core in the middle. Everything else formed around it, every non-life.
It is said that a boy once formed there, a life that came amidst the black earth. Nothing could be distinguished between him and the land on which he woke up on on. It was all but a blackness, without contour, without character.
The boy could but swim in the water around him. Never too far from the land he knew, never to far from the middle. He would swim out into the water, he would swim down into the water. It was the same world formless world which greeted him everyday, it was the same darkness which his eyes always met. He would always return to the land at the end of the day. He would but sleep, his dreams taking the same formless shape his very world was to him. Day after day, that same life greeted the world each day. And day after day, the same shapelessness and blackness met the boy, when he woke, and when he slept.
Some say that it when on for eternity, till everything in that world dissolved and the boy fell through the very blackness he swam into an eternity which was even longer than his previous. Some say that boy lived in that world so long till they both join and became a single formless darkness. Some say the boy just swam and swam and one day he died. And really there was no difference, because there never really was a life, in that world of darkness.

2007-05-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'm developing a problem, distinguishing between realities. Between the unconscious dreams, the conscious fantasies; the introspection and the daily perceptions.....
Lately I have been slipping into extensive periods of engagement with mental projections. Meaning if I see a purple top hat flying by with the aid of bat-like wings attached to its side (something like a golden snitch dressed for Halloween) I would say to myself, " Oh look, it is a flying purple top hat. It should probably loose a bit of the fancy rim. It definitely would be so much better for the aerodynamics of its fluttery flight." As opposed to gaping a little stupefied, and intensively staring with bewilderment at the fluttery host of paradigm fairyland which has so abruptly intruded my very dignified world of reality.
Reality?
I guess it just means that I everything I see, hear and feel has gone numb and is replaced by mental projections of what I 'think' everything should visually, audibly and sensationally feel like.
It is daft really. It's something like living inside your head, when everything around you really is on the outside. I have disconnected so badly from the 'objects' of my everyday that I do not give myself space to really feel the world for what it is. It's apparently my compulsive-control-mania spilling over into my apparent everyday. So I find myself falling in love one day perhaps. I now try to quantify and qualify all emotions and chemical/neuron alterations that happen within me within a spatial/temporal reality which I currently operate in now.
I'm losing myself to my head, and yes I have concluded that I lost my head a long time ago. In succinct terms, I'm lost.
I do not know what I'm supposed to actually feel, or think, and at what consequence.

2007-03-30T12:54:00.003-07:00

Self-hate is a religion they don’t teach enough. Should people learn to be harder on themselves, really a lot of the prevailing problems in society which religion and law tries to curb (in vain), we would be utterly successful without even trying, too hard. But really, is self-hate is easy?

In most common religion, high emphasis and worth is place on the body of the individual and especially that of the ‘soul’, one not of matter, but of some kind of eternal substance. A prevailing attitude of self-love, whether called for or uncalled for, justified, or unjustified naturally seems to be in the underlying themes of these common religion which adheres to the justification of a person and the outcome of his(her) soul in the afterlife. Anyhow, since the surfacing of religion in general is/was to provide the answers to the questions like existence and post-death, the general slant has been thus far towards some kind of happy ending.

Of course religion teaches a whole lot of things which the ‘devotees’ never do in retrospect/for a fact. In general, the adherers just take the wrong slant.

Because for most, religion is/was an answer for mere self-interest. People loved themselves. People needed answers with regards to themselves, even at the point of non-existence(death), people still need to pose attributes/characteristics of existence to something which is no longer there.

Basically, we have just inherited a long heritage of narcissism and self-vanity in our religions. Had we been earnestly struggling with real issues worth notice such as our decaying structures and persons; and perhaps hitting ourselves hard enough as we should, maybe the religion then, that would emerge amidst all of this self-flaying, would be one for self-forgiveness. Self forgiveness for the things which we could not change.

2007-03-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Close your eyes, the real world is painted on dark canvas behind shut eyelids.

Numbing. Every pulse sent a shiver to my fingers. They worked adamantly on, while my eyes wandered lost following their movement.

It was nearly finished. My mind was disconnected to every other part but my breathing. It heaved incessantly in rising rhythm.

Every thing else seemed to slow down, even sound. Had I been awake during the strange reverie I was in, I might have chosen to stopped breathing right then, and sleep.

Blink. I let myself stop for that short moment to watch it, finished. I become conscious of my heartbeat, anxious, anticipated, growing steadier at each moment.

And then everything stops. Then it swirls. Then order.

And it is right there.

Nostalgia is a place of meeting. The parts of us which we leave behind through our journey of life, sometimes they die away in our memories. Sometimes they live, and we find them again.

Wouldn’t it be strange to know, all the parts of us that we leave behind.

It wasn’t meant to be like that? But I left a part of me, right here, next to me, right now.

My hand at poetry:

Quaff misery
Indulgence is an ill-virtue
Happiness will always be wanting
Contentment is always at the end of the next rainbow

There is much wanting in this, which is causing a lack of contentment. I shan’t continue. But I’ll just leave it here anyhow. Let’s try again.

After life is AFTER life
The theist and votaries (and me)
Had better get their act together

Hmmm.

You walk right through me
Dancing unperturbed
When will you stop?

Quiver, your lips
Resonate, as you sing
Your melodies stalk
Dancing in me

You walk right through me
You dance, unceasing

And my hand stops here.