Friday, July 03, 2009

mehmeh

I have to so update this place. SO MUCH BACKLOG!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Bite marks

Bitten by a small shark. It left a painful mark. :(

Company Calls Epilogue

Synapse to synapse; the possibility's thin. I'm dressed up for free drinks
and family greetings on your wedding date. The figures in plastic on your
wedding cake that I took were so real. And I kept a distance:
the complications cloud the postcards and blips through fiber optics,
as the girls with the pigtails were running from little boys wearing bowties
their parents bought: I'll catch you this time!

Crashing through the parlor doors, what was your first reaction?
Screaming, drunk, disorderly: I'll tell you mine. You were the one
but I can't spit it out when the date's been set. The white routine
to be ingested inaccurately.

Synapse to synapse: the sneaky kids had attached beer cans to the
bumper so they could drive up and down the main drag. People would turn
to see who's making the racket. It's not the first time.
When they lay down the fish will swim upstream and I'll contest but they
won't listen when the casualty rate's near 100%, and there isn't a
pension for second best or for hardly moving...

Thursday, April 23, 2009

nightingales melt in summer

On the News tonight: Singapore recorded its strongest-ever winds of 83 km/h last night. I think it was just Sun Wukong on his speeding cloud.

It's been too warm to do anything recently. Too warm, too warm. My brain wanders and never goes in the direction of my notes in front of me. I so need to study, but I just can't. The heat oppresses like any authoritarian Lee, and there's nothing the opposition can do about it but be quietly quashed by this tropical heatwave. Now you know LKY was right, in a way; warm temperatures make you dumb and lazy.

Do your best, boy, you know you need it.

the brilliant green is brilliant.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

in warmth, in wind, in ochre of the wilderness sky

A freak wind blew through tonight, howling like the ghost of a gale. Trees bent like fern fronds, and plastic bags and styrofoam shards swirled in invisible funnels on the street below. The clothes rack in the balcony fell over and my windows slammed shut like eyes afraid to see. Lights came on all over the blocks opposite, bewildered faces appearing behind panes and watching for the sound they could not see, but for the whipping of branches and the cold fingers against their skin. Primal fear must be in their hearts.

A sepia image. Village mothers chasing their dusty children indoors, boarding doors and bolting shutters. "Demons are coming," and men with shovels and hoes brace against the encroaching forest of things they cannot see, but things they can feel through gritted teeth and in the depths of their animal souls. Spirits and demons.


A demon wind blew through tonight, and the sky churned red with clouds of brimstone.

I guess we will always fear that which we do not understand, and that which we cannot control.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

simple things.

You're something else, you are. And I would love to love you.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

different names for the same thing

Alone on a train aimless in wonder.
An outdated map crumbled in my pocket.
But I didn't care where I was going,
Cos they're all different names for the same place.

The coast disappeared when the sea drowned the sun.
I've no words to share it with anyone.
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed,
And all the different names for the same thing.

There are different names for the same thing.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

And 8, and 9, and 10.

A pink and purple pen.

When I think of you, I think about your smile, your eyes, your lips; the sound of your laughter, the sound of your voice, the funny little noises that you make. I think about how it feels to hold you, to put my arm around your waist, to hug you, to hug you tighter, to feel like lifting you up and carrying you about; to hold your hand, and such simple things; to touch your skin, and keep you warm – even though you’re the one who radiates heat. I think about your scent, and how you always manage to smell nice. I think about Penhaligon's, and a mental list of all the things you've ever said you like or dislike. The way your face crinkles when you smell something bad. The mental snapshot of your face lit by the cinema half-light after I first kissed you, the way you looked so young, so innocent…so vulnerable (and how I wondered what you were thinking). I think about the way your persona changes when you turn on your intellect, the assumption of easy seriousness and strength, the depth of knowledge that tells in your eyes, and how it sometimes seems you want to hide this facet of yourself. I think about the way you always punch me or kick me, and wonder why you like abusing me so much.

I think about how you make me feel. I think about how I don’t think I’ve felt the same way about you as I’ve felt about another girl, and how I don’t know how to describe it. I think about how I sometimes feel out of my depth when I’m with you, and I don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad. I think about how I get so easily distracted when I’m doing my work and your messages come in. How I have to push you out of my mind sometimes just to be able focus on something else. How I feel like I don’t want to lose you, but yet not even have you in the first place.

I think about what our circle of friends would think, and how the group dynamics might change, or not.

I think about how you're probably thinking about many of the same things.

I think about the (not many) things we have in common.

I think about all the different maybes we might become, by next year.

I think about you, and the difference between love and infatuation.

I think about how I feel so jaded of relationships, and whether this has changed.

I think about the perils of over-thinking, and reading too much into it all.

I think about taking pictures of you, and how it actually sounds quite perverted to say that I’m
thinking about it.

I think about how you might feel about me.


And how the list could go on, but for self-censorship.

rainbows in the sunset






Sunday, March 15, 2009

recipe

cook psychedelic
hippotamuses with
ajinomoto.

haikus can be so meaningless sometimes.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

et toi.

Watched slumdog today, again. Hearing the score a second time, I don't really understand how it could have won anything at all, except perhaps for unsocialized, cloistered US bookizen critics who have (probably) never heard or seen anything from outside the continent, and hence think mediocre indian-glish fusion-music is set to revolutionize the industry standard. Bah. Watch some Bollywood, SAG.

I will remember today for soft lips, and the whisper of soft breath.

Friday, February 27, 2009

As the Weatherlight falls into forest

Watched slumdog with sh. She wore a blouse and a skirt, things I hardly see her in around school. Should I take this as something more? I wonder really… what does she see of this? A date? A friendly movie? Perhaps a bit of both. I hope she doesn't think I’m leading her. After the movie we both went our separate ways, her to home and me elsewhere, with a pang of guilt, asking her out to a movie, and only a movie. Nothing more and nothing less, though for a moment it might have felt like it could have gone a lot more, somewhere. I knew, at least, not to court social mishap by extending our little meeting further. I run back to school to find that perfect sunset spot.

It took two hours (or less? I dunno, it felt like a long time) of climbing up and down stairs, sweaty shirted exploration of deserted stairwells, locked access hatches, closed doors all bolted chained. Then the sighting of yet another possible peak in the distance, yet another possible rendezvous with another rooftop.. arts to engin, and in between. I think I climbed every climbable place. But in the end I found something worth it.

Along the CDTL, a forlorn staircase stands off to the side as if abandoned by its parent, water-stained and muddied, 12 flights of leaf-strewn steps – what’s another set of stair after so many already. I climb it but discover there’s a barrier of daunting wall at the top… someone left a chair at the bottom of the wall: it must have been climbed before then.

I scale it, and go up. I look out, look down over the roof of the central library. Almost magical, to glance over the six-storey drop and yet there I was some minutes ago, on the ground now so far away. The dipping sun glares from behind a cloud, though I’m already quite high up now. A fireman’s ladder sits against another wall.

I go up again. I come out higher, on another roof. Another fireman’s ladder.

I go up again.

Suddenly the boundaries disappear, the walls fall away and the landscape yawns expectantly as if chiding ‘What took you so long?’ An expanse of sky and land and sea stretches out ahead and around, opens up before me like a panorama of sunset and Singapore. A bird’s eye view of here to the limits of sight, cloudless intersperse of air, no more obstructions of concrete and cement.

It takes the breath away, it does. Just… me, in the atmosphere, almost. As I stand on that little piece of roof, on the very pinnacle of that building, I realize I hadn’t found a spot of sunset. I’d found a circle of serenity, my own fairy ring of peace. A spiritual place. Up this high, you don’t see people, or troubles, or commitments, or facades, or any of the myriad other things of tired life. There’s just the air surrounding, and clouds above; the land rolls out below like an orange-painted canvas, surreal as a cubist’s dream. You feel detachment; you fall into ethereal thrall. The mind looks inwards as if an immense God holds you in his gaze.

The red sun peeps like a playful child over the horizon.

There and then, I felt at peace, more than I’d felt in a long long time. My feet anchored to the floor, but the mind afloat on a string. The senses calm, and I felt… small, and insignificant, but perhaps therein was the message; I am a mote among millions, and the world is big. This respite of scale, of knowing your place in the world, of the careless belittling of the self... made all the more amazing by the fact that it hides right in the middle of mundaneity. In the middle of NUS, for crying out loud. I took my time in reflection and in solitude, and of wind against my face.

The sun goes down, and throws its last rays across the higher heavens as the crawling dark creeps up behind me. I go down soon after.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A herald, in glass.

Two movies in a row is omg so tiring pls, plus the cinema was at that funny temperature where its cold enough to feel the the chill but not cold enough to wear a jacket... bargh. Valkyrie was cool, for once a suspenseful, exciting movie where Tom Cruise doesn’t defy metaphysics, reality, bullets or all three combined. He even dies at the end. Cool. My dad said Benjamin button was really good, and I take his word for it, though… after a while it gets a bit boring. You know where he’s headed ultimately, but you just wonder in what form he’ll have his death. Curious indeed.

And your hands are so small. I wonder if you come with a label that says ‘Fragile’, instructions to handle with care.

In this moment, I am fearful. Porcelain falls into shards.

Monday, February 23, 2009

an afternoon rain
is the colour of sunlight,
bright as your laughter.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Marching

I think I'm just too fickle for my own good. Make up your mind, brother!

Valentine's Day always leads to rash decisions, so don't.

Class with jaime. Lunch with soks, dinner with natalie, saw sarah at the bus terminal. lunch tmrw with xh. I bought curry buns today, and made a cup of coffee at home.

But I'm actually much happier now than at almost any time I've been in the past few years. More confident, more animated. More free from boundaries. More alive from the chase. I want things to stay/change, but decisions are always hard to make when marching.


Trip to sungei buloh on saturday! C'est interessant!

one of those facebook things that people are doing now

Rules : Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. :)

Tagged by: Michelle Teo, and Trixie Tang, who likes food, and pandas, and to whom i will give a packet of hello panda just to see her reaction.

1. I love coffee and gummies. Coffee makes my world go round! Gummies just give me cavities, so there's a bit of a love-hate thing going on there.

2. I keep fish. A corner of my balcony is filled with fishtanks haha! Some of my fish are like 'only for expert care' in taxonomy guides, but I'm pretty 'beginner care' only so there seems to be some discrepancy somewhere. I also have a tortoise that eats beans and craps everywhere in the balcony.

3. I love sashimi! Eh.. the karma works out somehow. Anyway i already expect i'll be reborn as a cockroach.

4. CATS! not the musical i mean, which i've never watched, but i love big fluffy real cats! I'd keep them but i'm afraid they'll escape thru the windows from my 3rd floor place and die. And they'll eat my fish.

5. I'm actually pretty clueless most of the time! Sometimes i walk into the LT without knowing what the class is, and I still need to look at the signs to get around arts fac. so sometimes people think i'm dao when i walk past them in the corridors or in the deck...but i'm actually just kinda lost.

6. Conversations: Its not because i don't have anything intelligent to say, but because I like to listen to what other people are saying.

7. When I was young: I once dived off a table, hit the wall and got sent to the hospital for a broken arm. I once also spun around until i got so dizzy I hit my face onto the same table and got sent to the hospital for split gums. Another time, I did a backflip off a lorry and got sent to the hospital for stitches on my head. But they were all different hospitals, so it was pretty cool.

8. I want to join another sport, and gain weight, but neither seems to be happening:(

9. I've failed every math test except at my PSLEs and 'O' Levels, tho I got F9 for AO Math at my 'A's. I do know how to count though. Toes are very useful.

10. I'm easily amused! If i ever laugh at you, please don't take it badly! It's just that i'm super amused by the random things people say or do, and it keeps me happy in a generally depressing world. :D

11. I love my friends alot! After my relative hermitage of some time ago, I'm trying to rediscover all my old friends. One of the things I sincerely regret was leaving them of out my life during those years, and relying on the arbitrary significance of a 'significant' other. Yeah, I'm doing time for it now, but i've learnt a valuable lesson:)

12. <-- Twelve is blank because of quantum.

13. Green stuff is cool. Like recycling, trees, and my room wall cos i painted it green.

14. SHOPPING. When i'm bored i go shopping, even if its by myself, and look at clothes and accessories and random stuff like gachapon egg-capsule thingies. My mum scolds me for having more clothes than my sister.

15. I feel that its perfectly fine for a guy to have alot of clothes. And like shopping. And sometimes gush about hot guys.

16. I also do not have legions of female fans who scream my name with a squeal at the end, and who want to take pictures with me everywhere they see me. They only appear when i close my eyes.

17. I like peace and quiet, especially at the beach. Unfortunately, the view keeps getting obscured by Bangla workers walking past hand-in-hand. Its so irritating to have a sentosa hiatus interrupted by foreign workers walking around everywhere. Plus the hand-holding thing is so freaky!

18. I think I'm quite full of nonsense.

19. LOVE DANCE. Hip-hop and modern, and lockin and poppin. But i don't do any anymore, because i think life is taking me in new directions. Also because i can't reach my toes anymore.

20. Pigeons are funny creatures. When another pigeon lands next to other pigeons on a ledge, they'll shuffle around in their little pigeon step until they're equidistant from each other. Its also very funny when they shit on people's cars. I like animals la haha, too bad i don't have animal planet or national geographic on tv.

21. French is a beautiful language and i'm learning it now!

22. My life is full of contradictions! Like, I'm always looking for new stuff to eat, but i'm also totally contented eating the same stuff everyday. And i'm easily bored by alot things, but i feel reassured by the boring constancy of things. And i like to meet new people but i don't really like talking to people i don't know very well. Uh.

23. I would never have written this if i did not also read the weird/funny/strange things about people beforehand! It was pretty fun to read!

24. There's a lion dance going on in the void deck of the next block, and the chiangchiangchianging is sync-ing with red hot chili pepper's "by the way" on itunes...... its a divine sign that i should close the windows.

25. i try to do things differently, or at least I'd like to think so. because it'd be no fun otherwise! very soon i will change the world too.


haha just kidding, i'm not obama.
THE END.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

huh!?

I'm kinda confused right now, and I feel pretty entitled to it. While I saw it coming and was generally approving of the match, what i didn't expect was the when and in what manner. It was pleasant to know the two of you fit like peas in a pod, and i was glad that he liked you so much to get together that soon... but. Wasn't something missing? ie, telling me about it? You could tell me 'oh, cos I wasn't sure mah...' and you'd expect me to believe you...you, Miss Self-Confident, I-Always-Know-Whats-Happening, and who once chided me for not being able to see things (eg your affection?) that are right in front of me? I feel somewhat betrayed in the manner of events...

But then again. It was an open relationship, and while I could have, I shouldn't expect too much especially in retrospect. I do feel like I disappointed you, in what I could not give you. I do feel I led you on for a bit too long, in my own semi-reciprocity. But now, I just wish you happiness, peace and contentment, and that he treasures you for all the specialness that you are. I can say I loved you in my own way... but only he could give you that full-blown romantic love, that spiritual comfort, that musical passion..

And though things might never go back to the way they were between us before our episode, I wish that we remain friends.