“He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart” - C.S. Lewis

“Don't miss all the beautiful colors of the rainbow looking for that pot of gold.” - Anonymous

people say orange is the happiest color, and purple is all about royalty.  red is for ignited passions and blue is the color of the sky. green is the color of fields in one too many football stadiums, and brown is the color of mother earth. ohh but yellow, yellow is the color of bright sour lemons, and singing canaries, and sunbeams. i love the color white. it is everything, and it is nothing. colors... they are the rainbows of our lives. what's at the end of your rainbow ?

"When a man and a woman see each other and like each other they ought to come together - wham! - like a couple of taxis on Broadway, not sit around analyzing each other like two specimens in a bottle." - Thelma Ritter

love is a collision of lips, of genitals, of passions, of thoughts, of actions, of families, of travel destinations, and of trivial decisions aplenty like whether it's eat-in or dine-out tonight and every night thereon. if all goes well, we proceed along the well-worn route to the Collision Reporting Centre where they take our statements and make us sign papers, then we take a photo or two as pictorial evidence whilst secretly crossing our fingers and hoping we bought enough insurance to covet a happily ever after.

love is not shiny blue sapphires, or pretty white diamonds.
love is *wham!*

then again, there's us.
:)

"All of us are mad. If it weren't for the fact every one of us is slightly abnormal, there wouldn't be any point in giving each person a separate name." - Ugo Betti

a wave of warmth trickled down my throat into the mysterious depths of the belly in one fluid movement, rivulets of happiness manifesting as a subtle upturn of a lip's corner.

how long has it been?

assorted stacks and canisters and boxes of tea lay in a leafy disarray on my kitchen shelf, looking rather neglected and forlorn. too many hours clocked at work, cup after cup of java to keep the fleeting adrenaline going with each caffeine dose, i must have momentarily turned into a coffee monster.

now i'm home, socks off, shirt off, pants off, everything off. take a minute, breathe, listen to my heart's throbbing pace in the silence, and then there's tea magically brewing by itself on the stove. suddenly i am untouchable, impenetrable; it's the taste of bright bright heaven, i can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. i don't need any reminder, why i fell in love with you in the first place. it feels just as real as the beginnings of time, pardon the exaggerations.  :)

"No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by." - Franz Schubert

Have you heard
the brook's mating song,
as the wind goes swishing by?
Have you heard
the robin's saucy note,
or the sparrow's lullaby?
Have you felt the ecstacy
of all the growing earth?
Then better
open wide your heart
to all the glad rebirth.
It's spring and somewhere
lilacs bloom,
I cannot see
from my lonely room.
Loved ones I wait to see
must be busy
as they have forgotten me.
But deep in my heart
I will always know
where white and purple
lilacs grow.

                      - Author Unknown

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." - Virginia Woolf

"The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it." - Rudyard Kipling

i am a messy person, and believe me, when i say something like that(in descriptive terms), it is usually a severe understatement. there's always a bunch of wilted roses lying around, cups with tea stains and lipstick marks, many many pens, books falling off shelves and clothes, lots and lots and lots of clothes in an already exploding closet so my couch and table top has been converted into a temporary apparel-hoarding shelter.

well, one of my new decade resolution involves taking a permanent vacation from most if not all of my quirky bad habits - i know, it's so vague, but then this way i won't feel half as bad when i don't really accomplish anything in the end (as we all know it's not very hard to imagine) - so, i started off by cleaning out my fridge.

all i really did was take off the seal on a refrigerator deodorizer and chuck it into the chill section where something that has turned bad is beginning to smell then i shut the door. voilà!







just kidding.


i then proceeded to wait for an hour for the magical green gooey lump of a thing i got from the two-dollar store to take effect and suck up the parlous miasma. for sanitization purposes, i put on a pair of latex gloves and an N95 respirator mask, then proceeded to scrub out the well-stocked fridge of expired food items. i was pretty enthusiastic about the whole spring cleaning thing until, *gasp*, horror of horrors, i found mushrooms growing on my mushrooms. 

... ...

in jaw-dropping mortification, i shut the refrigerator door and undressed to butt nakedness to hop right into the bath. i should just buy a new fridge altogether. or i could go back tomorrow and brave through the rest of it, i know not which to do. life is full of choices, choices choices choices. in my defense, those swiss brown mushrooms were only 2 weeks old.

"But he that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose." - Anne Bronte

“We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for.” - Anonymous

loneliness. how many of us are truly comfortable with that? it doesn't matter how many friends you've got listed on your speed dial, or how many family gatherings you turn up at, or the number of invites you get to dinners with coworkers to catch up on gossip and share silly laughs after a day's work. at the end of the day, when you're home, shoes off, hair let down, shirt undone, you take a moment in retrospection - sure, your day was packed with things to do, places to go, and people to meet; then why do you still feel so dissatisfied?

some of us struggle to find our place in society, more often than not succumbing to the norms and expectations tossed on us just to try to fit in with the rest. some of us may secretly enjoy being a rebel, refusing to just be another typical guy or girl with average intelligence, wearing ordinary clothes, attending ordinary meetings, drinking run-of-the-mill coffee... you get what i mean.

what i'm trying to say is, if you can't be comfortable with yourself, how do you expect the rest of the world to be comfortable with you? how much more extraordinary have we got to be before we realize that the ones who truly cares about us don't care how we look like when we wake up in the morning looking less than a perfect ten, or that we're a size 12 instead of a petite 8, or what messy eaters we are elbows on the table and all, or even the occasional crazy painted all over our faces when we're fighting through a stack of sales at the mall with a thousand other crazies, giving every tooth and nail for that extra 10% discount on the latest edition of D&G.

what is it going to take for us to get our sappy act together, quit feeling sorry for ourselves and start finding contentment by not forgetting how very blessed we are to still have a roof over our heads, a refrigerator packed with staple crop and processed junk, to have friends we don't very much deserve, and loved ones whom falls like sand through our fingers before we realize how much we're taking them for granted?

this all can change with a simple,
'I'm sorry.'

and a,
'How about dinner next week?'

well... what do you say?

“There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, "Anywhere but here.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

it is noon, and i am home. that's such a rare occurrence,  and usually only happens when work isn't taking me away from my beloved nest. today i have work, but i called in sick because i have turned into a slime spewing monster overnight, creak and groan with every ache in my joints. my hair looks like brown fur, and i look quite cuteridiculous with a blue stick-on cooling pad over my forehead to bring down the temperature.

a visit to the doctor's left me feeling a little distraught, for when the nurse presented me with neon pink, forest green, silver colored packets of tablets and a black bottle of syrup, i stuck my tongue out and made a face. the doctor frowned and obviously doesn't believe me when i said i will take them, hence he made a very disgruntled me sit down and swallow my medicines in front of him before he let me go home. he is as mean as the cough monsters in my throat.

upon returning home, i figured now i finally have time to dust off and roll out my yoga mat, and so i did, fighting off waves of dizziness that throws my 'core' balance off track and i think you can guess eventually i fell asleep on the spongy pink mat, a mess of droolies pooling from my open mouth in a rather unlady like position. it was after i woke up that i realized the packaging on those colorful pills had really fine print stating 'may cause drowsiness, please do not operate machinery or attempt yoga positions'.

dang.

"A dead end street is a good place to turn around." - Naomi Judd

but don't go in circles, 'kay?

"Part of me is afraid to get close to people because I'm afraid that they're going to leave." - Marilyn Manson

good morning, earth! it's a beautiful morning, perfectly started with an unrestrained yawn and a good long stretch across the makeshift couch. the alarm clock hasn't gone off yet, and i am unusually bright-eyed and perky.

it's a wonderful year, i think, i believe, i can imagine. the start of a new year more often than not reminds us of resolutions we made the last and couldn't keep. sure, i wouldn't mind getting off my butt and jump-starting the arrival of the millennium's first decade with some long overdue resolve and tenacity. i'm sure God and i are cool with that idea.

resolutions... should i pick one from last year?

"We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon." - Konrad Adenauer

roses and champagne, roses and champagne on a stallion ride down Les Champs-Elysées, i see pretty brown buildings and perfect blue skies and you. saddle and whips, saddle and whips, you see horse breaths and dog poop on the streets and commercialism in the glass windows. huff! perspectives; linear, aeriel, whatever. if we ever get a cat, will you let me name it Geometry?

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

nothing is as far as one minute ago. it is impossible to live in the past, yet all i can think about is the moist touch of your lips on mine, the soft cradling that's got me wound up in your arms.

the lights on the christmas tree are dim, gradually losing their glow as the batteries run dry. i switched off all the other lamps in the apartment, sitting by one's lonesome in the darkness, waiting for the last moments of christmas to die out with the pretty primrose yellow stars that seem to dance amidst the flooding wells of my eyes.

is it joy? longing? or nostalgia? only fools rush in where fools have been.
and you, you've really got a hold on me.

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these." - George Washington Carver

embrace the world.

“Though dreams can be deceiving, like faces are to hearts, they serve for sweet relieving, when fantasy and reality lie too far apart.” - Anonymous

this is the beginning of a new calendar, kick-started with a beautiful full moon hanging gloriously up in the sky. it was a glowing muddy yellow, somewhat like a mouse had turned on the lights in a block of  a green cheese home.

it rained a little tonight, tickling my insides with a tiny bubbling joy at the scent of damp air, at clouds lessening their burden. i should make the cloud monster my teacher, to guide me in ways to give and take, carry sorrow on my back for a while, but not forgetting to give it away, too, sprinkling it like magic dust, wash down the grasslands, make ripples on the ocean's face. to relinquish one's hold and follow the wind's lead, to hide the sun when the world needs a little gentler loving.

give away your troubled heart, find love inside of you.

2010. for better or worse, our future will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real. it's time to pull out all the stops, and throw out the old records. do one's damnedest, won't you? :)

"An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc." - Henri Matisse (Artist regarded as the most important French painter and artist of the 20th century, 1869-1954)

not anymore.

"We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong." - Sir Arthur Eddington (English astronomer, physicist and mathematician, 1882-1944)

cradling a mug of cold soup, i sat by the window with damp hair after a composing shower. the night wind was strong, carrying a faint scent of looming rain and wet grass. i removed my glasses with one hand, balancing the soup in another, relieved at the comfort my eyes took in the blurry world.

with my red rimmed spectacles, i could see with near perfect eyesight. tonight i'd seen a man leaning against the balcony of his apartment across the block from mine, lighting up a cigarette by his lonely self, puffs of white reek defying gravity and disappearing into the air. there was a lady too, awake, a couple of floors down from him. she doused her plants with a violet watering can, flexing her green thumbs at 2am in the morning. they must be having trouble sleeping. like me.

(content edited)

i'm tired of explanations, of reasoning, of negotiations to people i care about, to people who doubt me, to people who used to care. i might never be able to be fair to myself, and to you.

but tonight, i write. i write because it seems like the only appropriate place to start. it is the season of joy and giving after all. if you can't acknowledge the good i've done in your lives, for your lives, then perhaps, perhaps, you're no good for me, too.

"Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.” - Lord Byron

“Somehow, not only for Christmas but all the long year through, the joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you. And the more you spend in blessing the poor and lonely and sad, the more of your heart's possessing returns to you glad.” - John Greenleaf Whittier

it's just past christmas day, and i really should get going to bed now to wake in time for breakfast and for work tomorrow, but i'm not - not yet, anyway. sitting here typing, soft christmas music playing in the background... it feels like a huge part of me just wants to stay here and will time to slow down, let christmas linger on a while more.

this time of the year, melancholy never fails to find its way through the windy crooks and cranny of my heart seams, making home as if it always belonged there. one year in a sum seems like a second of my life spent, and i find myself in a thoughtful, reflective spot, wondering where i am now and where i am headed next. what have i done good this past year? what messes did i create, what wrong can i never put right again, and what can i do hereon to make things better? that's a lot for one night.

thou lovest, thou knoweth, thou maketh.
thou art, thou wert, thou hast, thou dost.
what hast thou?

just for tonight, after the clock chimes past midnight, past christmas, past a significant chapter of my life, let me enjoy the silence of the holy night, lounge in my queen sized bed complete with a warm duvet, and savor the last moments of magic in the air.

“All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud, you have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Rain usually makes me feel mellow. Curl up in the corner time, slow down, smell the furniture. Today it just makes me feel wet.” - Jeff Melvoin

some people say, when you can't remember why you're hurt, that's when you're healed. that just confuses me. i can't put my finger on a specific reason to shoulder the blame, but there's always a nagging crack in the wall, a discontinuation of continuity, an on-going ache in the depths of those supposedly put away. the pain is a reminder of every breath i'm taking, and everything dear i've lost. it makes me feel alive, but strangely morose. this must be what feeling lost is like; how irretrievable, squandered, misplaced, defunct... how futile.

"When a young man complains that a young lady has no heart, it's pretty certain that she has his." - George Dennison Prentice

kleptomania |ˌkleptəˈmānēə; -ˈmānyə|
noun
a recurrent urge to steal, typically without regard for need or profit.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time." - John Lubbock

i woke up in the wee hours of the morning and took a stroll in the neighborhood, feeling funny because i'm never one to wake this early without the help of three alarm clocks. there was a nagging tug on the heartstrings, and i thought it was indigestion. then i realized what the problem was: the Geminids have passed, and i missed them.

i'd have loved to lie down on a straw mat in the middle of a dark meadow, far away from the city lights, flask of hot chocolate and some rescue sandwiches in hand just in case the tummy rumbles. wrapped in a warm sweater, i'd rest my much overworked mind and wait for the stars to fly trailing by. even if i didn't catch any in the end, i wouldn't have minded, because dawn would've come and how rare it is for people like us to catch a whiff of morning dew in this city that never stops to smell the roses?

"How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?" - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching cold.” - John Jay Chapman

speaking of hot chocolate and muffins, i've been rummaging about my stash of stowed away books of good ol' recipes to put together a lovely christmas dinner come year end. any yummy suggestions? no fish, though. i am useless when it comes to things with fins and tails; they usually end up floating upturned in their little goldfish bowls, or down the garbage disposal because they flop out of the skillet tasting so bloody godawful.

i have never doubted my IQ and high precision in following printed cooking instructions blu-tacked to the wall, one eye devoted at all times. with fish, well, i don't know what goes wrong. maybe it's the freaky fishie flips they do to struggle with their impending death, or maybe it's the freaky eyeball staring accusingly up at me when they are lying on their sides, gills and all. eek.

anyway, before i digress further and lose myself in this one-way conversation about trouts mishandled, i really should go get some breakfast in me. how do you like this ?

just kidding. i'm really having this .

“Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.” - François de la Rochefoucauld

no man minds company, even if it is only that of a tiny burning candle. as every day slithers by unnoticed, christmas is leaning closer. i've lit my second purple advent candle of peace, and watched nostalgically as the flames went out in a snuff of thin smoke. for a moment there as the darkness fell upon me, i felt a little lonely. but that's ok, next sunday i'll light my third, the candle of love. and this time, it's rose pink, like the ribbon in my hair  :)

"Paint me an eternal tea-pot, for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning." - Thomas De Quincey

two very tall men are in my toilet from dawn to dusk, playing heavy metal music and doing arts and crafts. i get no sleep and bad allergic reactions to the waterproof scree and grout they use to paint my walls and mosaic my tiles. i have my showers at work and take the train home with wet hair dripping everywhere. a tiny boy asked me if it was raining outside and i made a disgruntled noise suggesting disagreement but he grasped his mother's hand tightly and shied away. i have a test tomorrow morning at 0800hrs and it lasts 2 days. the talented pair of a rock band will be knocking on my door at 0700hrs.

*insert disgruntled noise here*

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

i spent the whole of last week packing, amid the occasional rain and frequent pots of tea. i magically transformed my queen into a sofa-bed, creating more space for a proper table and chair to work on. i just folded the bed in half and placed it against the wall. now, that's genius. hee.

still, i can't believe i had so much crap. i took out the trash last night, all SIX huge black garbage bags of them. oh but that's not what's amazing. i left them by the door for like, 10 minutes, thinking i'll bring them down after i finish up in the apartment. when i came back out, they were gone!

*poof*

just like that. unbelievable. in under 10 minutes! now i begin to worry whoever brought them home scavenged through my old stuff and is going to find my discarded stash of secret journals...

“Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help.” - Calvin & Hobbes

:(

“All our lives we search for someone who makes us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance the song of heartbreak and hope all the while, wondering if somewhere, somehow, there is someone searching for us.” - Anonymous

"Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self, and grows with the calm of a tree.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

dusk is just an illusion, because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. and that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. how would it feel, i remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart?

"Buttercups and daisies, / Oh, the pretty flowers; / Coming ere the Springtime, / To tell of sunny hours.” - Mary Howitt

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." - Charles Austin Beard

ever felt that liberating sense of exhilaration, pounding on freedom's trail? it's quiet all around, and you hear only the sound of your heart beating, trying to catch up with each breath you take, blood rushing in the veins of your neck like the shrill bruit of a falsetto resonating in the echoes of the hall.

after a long run down river quay, i sat on the paving stone steps leading down to the canal for a rest. it looked so different in the day, busy place filled with sun and brisk people, boats floating along the stream giving tourists a glimpse of Singapore's central district area and the smells of delicious restaurant shophouses swimming past would, more often than not, render a hungry growl from their mostly round bellies.

in the night, well, it just looks like the whole world is asleep. so i plopped my entire self on the ground and laid there for a while, trying my best to count the stars but it wasn't dark enough, or maybe it was just my lack of glasses that made me squint so hard at the night sky. there and then, i decided i missed you. i fucking miss you.

when it is dark enough, you can see stars. will you sit in the dark with me, and maybe we'll stargaze for awhile, before you lean in for the longest, most gentle, heart racing kiss ever.

“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.” - E. E. Cummings

mud fight!!! :D

“Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy fat women.” - Nicole Hollander

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I know where you sleep.

recent posts

• breakfast!
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• will i, one day?
• nameless no more
• i caught a whiff of something bad
• roses have thorns, thorns have roses
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