i hope you had sweet dreams

what is magic but the realest of realities, no trickery.
today, little is needed to convince me how powerful the mind is, it's enough that i see myself going down on someone ive been pining for so long in what a lay man calls a dream. i remember laying my head on her neck and just fell asleep and feeling this is all i need and how it's enough for me to cleanse her of all the pain and hurt that i had left behind. and it's enough too, that i know the world is behind the window, behind this dream and the warmth is inside me. a dream it is, but it does not vanish when i close my eyes.

it has been a slow day, feeling the year that ive lived, feeling it still tingle as i reminisced the scent of the long forsaken yesterdays. in the middle of struggling to wake up from a dream so real, i suddenly realize how light and yet heavy i feel. how much baggage there is in this year, and how much or how little of those things remains with me now. ive lost a few friends, a lover, a soul mate but i did not lose love, ive lose my pride but ive not lose joy nor faith. what remains are truly things that may be forgotten but not lost, things that balance the weight of my trivial worries with their infinite weightlessness. im all right now despite and because of this.

ive a lot of goodness remains in me. good pictures, good times, hands that once were in mine, smiles on my lips and on the lips of others, and even tears. frightful tears and those hands that wiped them away, the pillows with my scent, the bedsheet with your blood, the silences that was deafening to the mind and heart, words exchanged. having lived it all through this year, having all that is, how could i grieve for what is not.

and i know some day, i will take joy in what will be but today, i shall take joy in what is.

meet you at the alley down the road

i like trapping sunlight within my eyes. i like lazing in a car and smiling out the window in anticipation, ready for when the sun will shoot out from behind the buildings, waiting, waiting, soon, almost, past another house, and there! - it hits my pupils so hard that it hurts and i close my eyes and keep in there, leave it hammering against the insides of my lids, and oh oh oh how good it feels, so close to painful, this strange pleasure of mine.

lazy hazy and so on and so forth. what to do, what to do. maybe this is the christmas jitters, the old butterflies born again in the pit of my belly. so restless, and somehow nauseous, mind a-flutter and a-woop. what i want to write is words, how and what they are, why they are, how strange they are, how truly perplexing and magical and inane, as well. useless. words, sign posts that guide us all into a bog of misunderstandings and false notions. yes, i say 'love', but what do you hear, human, what do you hear when i say 'easy' and 'hard'.

last night i lost another word. be proud of yourself, she said, and i realized that i could not. there is no pride in me, not for myself and not for others. there is joy and contentment and happiness in place of where pride used to be. why is it not enough, i ask her. she has no answers and then we have silence. i can't speak what i don't experience, and i can't experience what i don't experience. so goodbye, 'pride'. run along with the others that have gone. you'd only hold me back from being where i now am: not working with the future results in my mind, but working with the present work in my heart.

i do not want christmas gifts. and i'll not say anything of the sort to people, knowing that they've gone through the trouble of buying something already. yes, it's nice of them to think of me, to want to gift me with something that they hope i'll like. but i think i'll let them know next year that i'm happiest with empty hands. the other day i went walking around and suddenly it made me so sad to be standing in the midst of all those things. christmas this and christmas that, christmas on the floors and hanging from the ceilings. row upon row of christmas. yet it was not. it was only stuff. as if love should be expressed with something that comes with a ribbon around it. there's sadness in this. but oh well, for now.

last night i lay in the dark, on my back, in silence. close my eyes and press my palms against my ears, tightly, tight enough to feel the pressure building up inside myself. hear the bones of my hands creaking, press harder so that the tension will build up enough for silence to exist. now hear the life in my body, the quiet hum and rush of my blood, the spacious sound of my breathing, entering and leaving my lungs. afloat and adrift, in emptiness.

in sleep, i dream of apologizing to people whom i've hurt and let down before and suddenly all panic is lost and everything is all right again. wake up to a new day that feels special, because it is. today is glittery, to the eye as well as the thought.

i look forward to next year, to falling back, staying behind, watching it all again, immersing myself in silence and in words, quiet nights for my own and days filled with people and with learning. i do not want to run away from a thing because hiding is never quite of a solution and what im lacking here severely is really integrity and courage. plain old balls of guts. and i've none.

so many loose ends to catch and follow, back to where everything comes together and makes sense. so much to write about. but maybe i'll go talk with someone instead, now. let them know how good it is to be around them. such things don't need to be kept a secret.

merry christmas to you and im sorry it hadn't been a good year. it will be better, i promise.

he said he said

mister seah makes me feel so ashamed of myself.
for real.

he, who hardly has enough, donates regularly to the charity and i, young, abled adult is all about fulfilling my own personal needs, my devious wants. i am ashamed.

i love how he stays so true and grounded, the sincerity in his wry smile gave me so much warmth and rekindle my desire to just follow my dreams and not fear. i don't know how i would ever be able to do that but i know, i know i want to.

of crazy days and beers in afternoons

i need you to show me the way from crazy
i wanna be so much more than this

i had a rather good day today working on my vocals with catt. it was fun and absurd with catt belting out the most obscure songs that ive never heard of in my entire 21 years life span. and maybe we would all become lola from co copacabana one day. all jaded with a tiny streak of sanity left. i dont know, the songs were sad like that.
sometimes i wish i could just sleep on forever. its annoying to be awake and not being alive enough.

its tedious sometimes to live life as it is.

in the color of my father's eyes

the night feels huge and i feel tiny. not up to saying anything to anybody, just ramble by myself.

why am i so often the last to notice my own mistakes. why am i often so blind to my mistakes even when they've been pointed out to me for a long time. by the time i do see, it's too late. not too late for me to learn, never that, but too late to share the joy of learning, too late to share the fruits of it.


and i sit at my keyboard, staring at the blank screen, watch the cursor winking at me, endlessly. so i sit here and wait for words that would save my soul and set me free from these burning desires and hatred or discontentment that im feeling but nothing like that comes. just words that are used up, and words that are useless, and words that i don't even bother to save.

i just want everybody back, anybody actually. i know i shouldn't want such things. and i know that what i know is not always what i am. but i want. want. want.

my mistakes would be regrets if i thought that they'd be more useful that way. but no, just do differently the next time. maybe i'll trust instead of fearing. maybe i can tell the difference now, after all this time. and maybe, knowing the difference will make a difference, some day.

i still dream of moving across the continent, owning a house with a nice kitchen, a great entertainment set with a nice couch. someone said, maybe i should get away from some people but i think i should get away from myself. i can never be myself when im stuck here in this stinky awful place. i can never be contended. i get pass everyday promising myself better days in a foreign land soon. i dont thrive here. im shallow this way.

dizzy with the need to sleep, dizzy with the desire to stay awake. but i'll go to bed and turn off the light. write tomorrow, write in the morning. i just cant even begin to describe this scorching need to be with someone now, too ashamed to even type it down. im hopeless yet hopeful.

i come along just because im lazy.
i go along to be with you.

some days are meant to be lazy

suddenly i feel that i'm about to understand something important, something about being, something that i previously understood entirely differently. indeed, i now realize that i did believe that i knew enough, which is always a dangerous thing, especially since such beliefs can sprout up in secret, without giving notice of their existence, nourished by hopes and fears and barely realized values. this about-to-understand is a nudge at the back of my head, a vagueness, a vaporous sense of uncertainty, the kind that tightens my belly into a ball of anxiety, coated with a sprinkling of excitement. "what does it mean" and "what will happen" and "where am i then" and "i'm confused".

i wonder if cats and dogs and birds ever get this feeling in their tummies. do they realize, and re-realize, and realize that their previous realizations weren't all that there was to realize, after all. oh idleness.

and her happiness is sublime to see, her gestures more calm than in months, her patience no longer worn by constant bickering, his presence soothing her heart. i like watching them, i like sitting in their delightfully eclectic kitchen and talk with her without feeling that there was anything that he couldn't overhear.


are we truly who we are because of the small things, is our truest identity truly hidden in the things that we don't truly pay attention to. do my habits reveal me more than i could, is there something to be known in the way that i always pick this spoon but never that one, in how i always slip my keys into the pocket of a certain coat whenever i come home, in how i take forever in picking fruits, in how my voice lowers in pitch when i talk with certain people. he has a habit of expressing concern over how fast i drink my orange juice at lunch, she has a habit of searching for words with her hands as well as her mouth, he's in the habit of forming his questions so that it's near impossible to give an answer that would please him, and she just can't fall asleep unless the curtains are completely closed. are these secrets in ourselves that we never truly realize but other people could reveal for us. possibly, plausibly, probably. perhaps.

all this leaves me pensive.

i want to be a baker now. wearing an apron always makes me aware of the image of a housewife, and how such images really don't say everything, not at all. if i store food into plastic containers, it doesn't mean that i'm sexually frustrated. if i hum to the water pipes while doing the dishes, it doesn't mean that next i'll start scrubbing the floor because it's all that i can think of doing. and if i were to start scrubbing the floor because it was all that i could think of doing, it wouldn't mean that it was all that i could think of doing for the remainder of my days. it's strange that such images are lodged so tightly within our minds, and strange how reluctant we often are to look beyond them.


in the image of a baker now.

inevitably so

and though you speak in snowflakes
your frost no longer bites
but only melts upon me
for i am warm.

i would have continued sharing the wonder with her, in ways both intimate and amazing, but she says she no longer loves me, to which i can say nothing in return, only sigh and feel compassion as i would to any other who sinks away.

and i hear echoes inside where she used to be.

oh i know that this isn't the end to me, not even an end. this is another day. i do what i would have done in any case. i live, i breathe, i allow myself to be sad and joyful in turns, dazed, amazed, through and through. in motion without moving. and sad.

one night i sit up in bed and cut away several pages of a book that i'm reading. i've never liked those pages, just knowing that they're there has always bothered me, pages full of suggestions and recommendations, telling me how i should understand something. so off they go, into the trash, leaving behind only jagged stubs of paper, and a sense that some wall was removed from where it stood between me and the universe. on i go.

and later, on another day, another time, today, i sit in the kitchen and i remember you, and the pit of my belly is falling down, down, down through the floor and the ground and the core into emptiness. i can sense how fucking good it'd feel to become hard now, how fucking good it would feel to be bitter and full of hate. but i no longer know how, damn me but i don't know how. i've forgotten what i don't need, i've forgotten what i have no use of, so i forget what i can't remember, and notice the song on the radio. humming inside and tracing the ceiling, and the timeless softness re-enters my eyes.

softer, softer, soft enough to consume sadness, know it sinking deeper into me, know it touching me as it passes through, know it leaving a little something behind, a little something for me to recognize it again when it next comes by.

merely thinking

sometimes it's just beautiful to stop and listen. to throw away the questions that plague reason and to just let go and accept emotions without questioning. it's okay sometimes, to not always feel all right and a-okay. there's a certain beautiful frailty in the silence of not knowing why . i forget very easily, much to my dismay those simple things.

it is the return to welcoming and embracing sadness, were sadness a long lost friend.

how do i deal

the funeral procession's over and we are all over.

its a strange kind of comfort that ive been seeking, the kind that makes me feel that im all normal and that im fine, nothing is all that wrong with me and everything is just a passing phase. which of course, only the passing phase part is sadly right.
i dont know what to make of the fact that i hardly teared at the wake with the demise of my own grandmother. i felt such grief and yet i did not have the ability to express it. i was lost in my own thoughts most of the time, either that or i was too busy conversing and catching up with my cousins. it hurts me to know that i couldnt even shed a tear for my own grandma when i could easily shed gallons of such for other people. im not a good person. but my grief cannot be measured with such because it just cant. and i feel slightly better thinking of that.

everyone's gone now and so are the memories.

childhood memories of visiting my grandparents at the rural house of theirs remains and yet seem to be fading. i could never find such heaven again. the simplicity of being in a familiar place surrounded with people and much joy. the bliss of knowing that you may have a second serving of peanuts cracker without scoldings, the down to earth games that we used to play, running around bare-footed, getting it down and dirty, swinging from trees to trees across the little stream playing tarzan. cousins who were both playmates and comrades. it's not gonna happen no more. it stopped right after the move. gradually and suddenly. like how people got bankrupt or mad or insane or depressed. gradually and suddenly.

good things just don't last and you would better believe in it.

i've never been close to my grandma. never. i used to like my grandfather more than my grandma just because my grandfather showed that he loved me and my brother more than anyone else. even if he was bedridden for years after a boy ran him down with a bicycle. even if he was bedridden, i loved to see how his face would lit up when i bought him his favorite durian flavored popsicle and how every chinese new year, he would beckon me to go near him as he laid in his bed, sneaking a red packet worth of 20 sweet love bucks into my hand and whispering into my ear in a language that i cld never be comfortable with, telling me not to let the other kids know that he gave me a hong bao. he had the most genuine and generous smile ive ever seen. he was never stingy with smiles. hes generous with smiles. and im sad now as i think about him. its ironic how im missing him after all these years.

my mother is an orphan now. and im sad for her.

hello you!

we can be this happy too.

so she said and said and said and said

i loved you like a woman, i loved you like a sister. i was the harlot who could sing dance laugh cry with you, and i came nude and free. now i cant tell who was more shameless, and i was happy to be shameless. i did unto you more than what i would have you do unto me. i played God and now i am casting the first stone. i am crucifying you without a trial and you would die not knowing why. i know you would never know why cos your weak and sordid nature could never comprehend fierce love and honor. you know only to canvass and covet affection to soothe your own pain but you cant hardly generate any for others. i could still have been loving you richly, so very richly, enjoying every awakening moment with you, but you did the last favour by removing the splinter from my eye.

surrendering

inadvertent hold
distantly accommodating
last surrender
so softly spoken.

thoughts for today

daydreams don't come easy. but if i got down to it - how smilesome that i must set myself to dream, it doesn't happen on its own, for i've so little that i could want - i'd dream of being with you. you know it. and i'll not say more about that.

"such love in your touch," she said, and it was true. my hand slid down her arm to touch her wrist and i loved all of her.

feeling different surfaces, different textures. it's like a greeting before entering. it makes me feel welcome. sometimes i want to taste everything. i want to kiss things. sometimes i do. the area above my upper lip is extra sensitive to different temperatures. i want to taste everything, yes. it's a new idea, a new potential experience. and now that the potential exists, i'm aware of it, and i'll think about it, and one day i will have overcome my fear. so it has been with everything else.

i'm sleepy. every thought ends too soon. they come, but i'm sleepy, so they go away, untouched, left to rest. until the next time, nite nite and day day. it makes me happy to think that maybe someone will notice something special today. something amazing. anything.

on a different note, pride left and took depression and misery along with it. and i'm that smiling girl waving the gloomy trio a happy goodbye.

folding laundry, grumpy, thinking of other realities. a sheet slips and falls on the floor. stab-inna-sec: how dare things not be as i would have them be. "fuck." a minute later, on the way to school this morning, my mind veers back to that 'fuck' and the anger that prompted it. where did it come from and why. a sheet is just a sheet, not a reason for doing anything.

just like pride is just pride, not a reason for doing anything. pride is a justification when there truly is none.

my sickness had a hand in my impatient mood, yes. but that's just an excuse, a reason without a reason. i have this post-gloominess habit of looking back at all that's transpired in the state of mind that i've now emerged from. it's not that i wallow in gloominess once it's gone, i just don't want to be as if it never was, because there's always a reason for everything, and i want to know those reasons. being aware of the reason why things have happened helps me better deal with the situation if it comes round again. and feelings have a way of swinging by without being invited. i guess i like being ready, even though i can never know what will happen and thus can't be prepared for anything specific. but i can be prepared to not trap myself in misery.

i used to wallow a lot. once i saw whatever it was that i wished i hadn't done, i then proceeded to give myself an emotional thrashing as well as a mental one. self-loathing, contempt, even hatred, all used as a form of punishment, because i believed that i should be punished. but that never really helped, only made me feel more miserable, and the worse i felt, the heavier came the guilt, and the harder it was to let it go.

but that was then and this is now. today i'm all for growth, not punishment. i don't even believe in prisons, but that's another story, not one i care to get into now.

funny how it was a 'fuck' that finally gave me a pause. i feel like i've been spinning for three days, which is a long long time for me to hang onto a sad mood, even if it wasn't all tears and pain all the time. it's good to be still again, free to look around without feeling sick. from the start, i was aware that all i had to do was let it go. i was all ready to let it go and feel better, but a small, stubborn, persuasive part of me said no, no i will not. all the while i know that this is a load of crap. i know full well that my bad mood is nobody else's fault. but that stubborn part of me doesn't want to know this. because if i were to acknowledge that my mood is of my own doing, i'd also have to acknowledge that i'm the only one who can do something about it. whereas if i blame others for my situation, it's only natural for me to then expect those same others to fix it for me.

that's a pattern that's very hard to dissolve, a pride pattern. i'd rather not enter it at all.

and now it's all behind, and tonight is all ahead. call me a fool, but i'm feeling festive, enough to have baked a cheese cake, downed three cups of orange juice. this is a perfect moment to step out, taste the air, experience something special, love, and appreciate what there is to appreciate in this life. which is all of it, really.

see you later

boy in black and girl in all colors, some day you'll realize that your life is your own. changing for the sake of standing out is changing for the sake of blending in is changing for the sake of standing out is changing for the sake of blending in. they are one: in both cases, you caper to the tune of the crowd instead of dancing to the song of your heart. why not let everybody else just be, why not let yourself just be. you are yourself, regardless of what you would some day be.

ah, i can't help but smile. i know i'm often misunderstood and just as often not understood, but it doesn't frustrate me anymore. it used to, it made me scream into pillows and squeeze my hands into fists, i'd bite my knuckles and pull my hair and cry and laugh and laugh and cry. but it doesn't matter anymore. it just doesn't matter what happens after i've spoken, as long as i speak sincerely, without trying to do anything. confusion creates change, but i can't and won't control that change. it's not my duty, nor my desire.

and here and now, on this chair by the window, i have the desire for a shower, and someone might say that it's my duty as well. feeling flushed, feeling restless, feeling like doing some walking today, with and without friends, aimlessly as well as with aim, i'll be around, outside and inside, today and tonight, with love.

see you later.

hush

it doesn't matter what other people have or don't have. it doesn't matter what i have or don't have. my problem is that though i have enough problems, i keep creating ones; first twisting myself up in knots and then unraveling myself, again and again. perhaps this is my way of entertaining myself. perhaps i'll stop doing that. or maybe i simply stop worrying about it now.

no distress. no apathy. no despair. nothing, really. being and doing. my frustration comes from trying to get somewhere even though i'm already at the center that i'm trying so hard to reach. i might as well acknowledge it and let it go, stop being so stubborn. for i can be in doubt without having doubts. there's a difference there, and not a very subtle one either. it always amuses me to realize something i hadn't noticed before. my stubbornness almost makes me blush, though. it's like an old-fashioned magic trick that's charming but not really magical anymore. it's almost embarrassing to fall for it, time and again. smile anyway, because it no longer matters.

and i feel so confused today. i don't know where to go from here. i don't even know if direction is the right thing to seek. for in choosing a path, would i not be abandoning other paths. perhaps that would only mislead me.

i'm not at all ready. though the things that i realize seem huge whenever i happen upon them, every time i look back, i see that i'm always at some beginning only. always starting out without ever reaching an end. and that's all right. that is as it is.

and i am as i am. but i don't know what to do with myself. am i truly to do nothing. i don't know. people seem so certain. they have passion and conviction, desire. they want to do things, even if many of them have great problems with being motivated. but to me that lack of motivation is a sign of something. something important. and still they follow their desire to do something, and continue to struggle. i don't truly understand.

sometimes i'm filled with dread when i think about this. i can feel myself spinning further away, even as i sink deeper into the world. i have no passion, no conviction, no desire left in me. i feel like i should do something, but only because that's what people do; we do something. sometimes i wish i could just believe what i'm told. but i don't, and i can't, and i still wish that i could and would. but yeah, i don't really wish for it either. the old "i wish that i wish that i wished..." an endless chain of wishing for wishing. and because the chain never ends, the wish is never made.

if i direct my light towards something, am i not leaving something else without.
oh it doesn't matter at all. does it?

coming around

when people are seen as inferior, they become inferior. when people are seen as superior, they become superior. when people are seen as equal, they become equal. we treat people according to how we see them. what our eyes cast out into the world is what we meet in the world. a person says that people are stupid and treats them according to this opinion, with contempt. another person says that people are amazing and treats them according to this opinion, with wonder. yet they are both held by their own illusions, their own opinions. people are people. simple.

i'm fairly muddled tonight, about this and a dozen other things, my own opinions have become like sand in my pocket; not something that i care to carry around. too much on my mind to be writing right now. go out and walk, or meditate, or get high, or all of it together. i have this feeling that i'm onto something. something has been shifting at the back of my head for days now, and maybe i'll catch a glimpse of it tomorrow, if i happen to be looking at the right time. the calm has become rather effortless, thoughts no longer chatter the way they used to. i like mornings when my heart is empty and my mind is clear, and i love someone distant and someone who's at hand, and what i discovered half an hour ago is still with me, ready to be explored. 10:24pm and i almost wish that i could soothe the despair of those who hurt. almost. if i did, it wouldn't be real, it would be me on them, not they in them. i'd like to hold hands, though. that i would do, if i could. sometimes i can't. so my compassion is just a murmur in the sun, lost into the roar of traffic. but it's there anyway, whether someone hears it or not.

and i'm here, and then i'll be elsewhere again.
goodnight, well, maybe.

before i forget

it's quirky how strange thoughts hit when you are drifting into sleep gradually.
i just want to quickly note down this. i really do love my mother and my father and my brother and all. i really do. i conjured an image of my mother being worried and something in me cringed immediately. it's strange. but now i do know for a fact, i really do love them all.

my father

i've always turn to my father in time of crisis.
he never fails to give me advice that i so need badly.
this morning, he did the same.
sometimes i love him for who he is and sometimes i hate him.
we have a funny relationship going on here.