"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

“I find the great thing in this world is, not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

have you met Lindsey Ray? it's amazing how her songs haven't been splashed all across the oceans yet. it's fabulous! i'd share it with you directly, but her music turned up little results on google, so just visit her site and ♥  track 4: You Make Me Happy, and track 6: Float Away.

it's a dream, i tell you :)

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” - Plato

who knew plato who called love a serious mental disease could be so darn romantic?

"The great big city is just a wondrous toy made for a girl and boy." - Lorenz Hart

oh no... this is one of those days, those days where i would love nothing better than to pack my polaroid camera and drive down some scenic route on an impromptu road trip :)

who's coming with me?

"There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing." - Clarence Day

and an art of idling.

so, no more ranting. i'm home, and happy, and comfortable. i am going to plant my idle butt on the bed all day, and occasionally reach for the tall glass of chocolate milk on the bedside table when my throat is dry. i am a happy loafer, a contented sloth.

*yawn*

“In all our quest of greatness, like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, we follow after bubbles, blown in the air.” - John Webster

Note: the content of this post has been censored for the well-being of readers. 

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” - Anonymous

someone once told me that a sign of intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason. well, i told that to someone else, and someone else tells me that it isn't intelligence, it's a form of fear - buttering everything up with logic and explanations for feelings so profound words do naught but shame. it got me to thinking for a while. i don't know if i'm a tiny coward, or just part of the intelligent species amongst us; right now i don't really care.

it's cold tonight, for a tropical island like singapore. the rain monster is dragging his green tail across the clouds, contemplating when the next sprinkle of drizzlies is going to come. huddling beneath my pile-on of blankies and fluffed up pillows, i don't feel very much warmer, only strangely drained and frowny. if i were a dwarf i'd be Grumpy. sometimes Sleepy, occasionally Doc, but that's only because i wear glasses now and then appearing to be more intellectual than i actually am.

i'm just putting off going to bed now, really. it's late and i have a full day ahead at work tomorrow, so i should really go.

goodnight, blue saturday. hello, rainy sunday.

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” - Dale Carnegie

i had a dream
that i dove into the deep dark ocean,
not without hesitation,
but there was a hand
warm, encouraging, serene
it pulled me closer to the cliff's edge
and i leapt

afraid,
courageous

panicked,
tranquil

but mostly euphoric!

i had my arms around your neck
like a child on a dolphin
i couldn't tell, if
i was having fun
or hanging on for dear life
but i woke up
not without a thrill in my veins
and a most lingering wonder
whose hand did i take
so readily, like i wasn't me?

"My mother always told me I wouldn't amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, Just wait." - Judy Tenuta

it's one of those perfect sunny afternoons where curtains flutter in the gentle breeze and a fresh pot of orchid tea sits on the stove top, just waiting for someone to pick it up and take an appreciative sip of its floral soporifics.

i picked up the green dishwashing liquid in a bottle and squeezed, grinning impishly as tiny soap bubbles smelling like fresh apples float magically in the sun filled room. i undressed, and played with those pretty bubbles some more, before slipping into the shower to lather up deliciously white frothy foam on my pale skin.

rinse off, dry down, wriggle into some un-nakedness,
and now i'm just putting off going to work. i'm STALLING!!! :(

"Hurried and worried until we're buried, and there's no curtain call, Life's a very funny proposition after all." - George M. Cohan

i took the long route home tonight from a late night movie in town, felt like i needed a long walk. the air was humid with the recent rain, roads were quiet and the street lamps were dimmer than usual. i passed by the night market that has been around for a month or so, and they packed up tonight for the last time. no more wandering around with candy floss and petting the porcelain german shepherd sitting by the walkway with its tongue hanging out, i guess.

life is strange, infuriating and yet amazing, all at the same time. some people wish for the slow lazy days in the country side, some yearn for the hustle bustle of the city. some people give back to society, helping the poor and the needy, some are the takers, and takers only. one life blooms, another ends. aren't we all just part of a struggling species in this vast universe, struggling to survive, to live, and to love. how much loving have you done today?

sometimes it feels like you could use that one person who brightens your day without fail, and somedays you just need the familiar scent of a loved one. today, i need nothing. i think, i have everything i need. almost.

"What is my loftiest ambition? I've always wanted to throw an egg at an electric fan." - Oliver Herford

that's the sound it makes when you actually thrash it with an egg. it ain't pretty. i didn't really try that, i just, well, imagined it to be. i've been having trouble with my imagination lately. my occipital cortex has declared itself dysfunctional, and sleep deprivation hasn't helped very much. to exacerbate things, i woke up from a pretty fucked up dream about dead babies in milk bottles last night. it's haunting, how some things just never let up. you think it's gone for good but really, you've only just swept it under the carpet, kept it away in a locked chest, stowed beneath the floorboards. what are we to do?

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I know where you sleep.

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