I feel somehow expected to be capable, It ought to therefore come automatically that given I will work, I will succeed, I will focus, I will complete my exams brilliantly, I will graduate with nearly-straight As. (H1 Chinese I can't help, after all.)

I don't know why. I'm tempted to say it's all a façade that I'm keeping up. I'm a mess underneath, I try not to cry when I'm alone, I flub around and sulk at my messed-up notes, and I do not want to work; I've been working, why should I be able to get past these exams, given I couldn't get past any of the ones that came before.


It's so easy to focus on what I've done, and what I've proven to be under given circumstances.  These weren't normal circumstances, and I did not have sufficient resources . It's too easy to generalise that, no matter what, achievement is out of my grasp. It's easy to be mired in doubt, to pull at my unravelling threads, to call myself a basket case. So it's too easy to pull on the sackcloth, and scatter ash like confetti. It's all terribly self-indulgent.


We know that this is a deceitful frame of mind. Rest is necessary, finding reasons to be positive is crucial. Yet it seems - safe, to assume hope can't be trusted in, given how many times it's been crushed. 

How absurd. It is impossible to be certain about the future. Given we have some control over our future, our actions largely determine the outcome we'll face. In other words, belief might as well be the best way to go.

Self-pity is a big chilled storage room in a warehouse with broken teeth of windows, and a flimsy lock over the door linking a rusting chain. It's no shelter, and certainly no place to rest. Very little keeps you there, but still - the exit is barred! If you look at the chains and jump to the conclusion that you cannot escape, then nowhere is where you will go. You'll remain forgotten packaged meat, infinitely delayed from reaching any destination, just human flesh rotting and waiting to die.

It's not hard to escape, if you want freedom badly enough.

But there we have it.

The real prison is in the mind.

Ah shoot.
I've come to the conclusion that I simply can't write on Tumblr.

I post, I link, I reblog. Occasionally, I find recourse to rant. These are all useful, valid ways of communication. But there's something missing. I can't write, staring at the Tumblr page. It makes my fingers itch. I flip through my numerous open tabs. I have the attention span of a toddler. I fiddle with a sentence or two, then I send the thought packing.

To my mind, there's somehow not enough space, in that box, for more than a tweet's length, a snapshot. To say anything more seems somehow ungrateful. I don't want to waste space on anyone's Dashboard (central processing area, where all posts are collected, from the Tumblrs of the users one is 'following'). There are more interesting things than my little life, and too much that I would want to say, if allowed to.  

And honestly, I'm too lazy to create a new LJ account, when this one has remained fresh and useable. Don't ask me how the such classification or coding works. My head is too complicated for me to explain, even to myself. Meta-self-analysis!)

-

So here I am again. I've forgotten how to blog, to be honest. But I think I'd like to try to remember how.

I'm now alarmed by the amount of space Livejournal gives me to record my circumambulating (which means long winded) cereberal processes into sentence after meandering sentence. There's something wrong, I can't explain it. Surely a person isn't supposed to want to detail this much minutiae, or expect other people to want to read it. Surely everyone has better things to do with their lives!

Apparently not. Oh dear.

-

Not much housekeeping to do, only rest in the return. This feels like settling back into an old armchair, or a worn coat left at the back of a closet.

There's something unique about each site I've shed a little of my skin and tears in. Some things aren't worth remembering. They often hold only sentimental value. Perhaps the shape and smell of them mean more than the items themselves. They're residual, parts of a person I was. I keep them, I recognise them as my own. They don't fit my frame of mind any more. But some thoughts linger, like faded fragrance. Some of the tatters I wrap around me, seeking comfort - shelter from the sharper edges of me.

They remind me of how I am - how I have always been, and may always remain. I've walked these floors before, but somehow my feet take me on new routes each time. The scenery changes - or maybe my perspective does. But where I've forgotten the paths, somehow, these old scribblings remind me of what I've learnt and forgotten, over the years. Hard to explain.

I suppose the way I deal with things and react to situations hasn't really changed, under the surface. My behaviour changes, but my motivations haven't. I interpret and respond using different means. But they pass, maybe quickly as my moods shift. The direction of the currents change, with the wind. The undercurrent remains.

-

Why this vanity, this desire to reveal myself as I want to be seen? (Maybe the question says it all.)
It feels like I've lost my voice. I'm pants at explaining myself in person, to another person, unless I hide behind the veils of the poetic, or the sharp furious gears of intellect and rigorous analysis. I rant, or nothing solid comes out. I do too much mental rehearsal, working and reworking my phrases, to be able to express what I want on the first try.

So it's impossible to achieve that kind of expression in conversation, for me. Conversation is meant to flow as an exchange. I want to hear other people's thoughts, to create some kind of shared space between our minds. I'd rather hide behind my computer screen to understand myself, thank you. Give me space. Something comes out of that apparent isolation and introspection, a kind of freedom that eludes me, except when I am perfectly still, and listening for its faint heartbeat. I don't know why. What it produces seems to hold more worth.

But it's lonely, picking apart my thoughts and storing them into a notebook. Some things are meant to be worked through in private, certainly. Nobody wants to really have that personal, intimate space ever intruded, even by the most trusted of allies. There is something too fragile, in the inner world, to be invaded. Some thought can't be heard by anyone else, except God. We probably think and feel far more than we would ever like anyone to know, far more than we would like to concede to, even to ourselves. But not all thoughts are like that. 

-

I don't mean to turn this small section of the Interweb into a pity-party joint. I promise, something happier and less self-indulgent will turn up here. I hope I won't abandon this place too early. But I hope I won't waste too much time. 

Still, that's a question of priority, isn't it?

To close the circle, I've moved to Tumblr.

It's been a while since I've opened the LJ Post An Entry page. It tugs at my heart, a little. LJ keeps many of my memories. These journals keep record of what remains dear to me, now further on in the passage of time.

But as much as I've loved this place, I must admit that Tumblr better suits my purposes. I'm not a very committed blogger, I write when the mood strikes me. More often, my fancy is caught by photos, songs, thoughts. (It's unquestionably a blog and not a photodump site, still, and I intend to maintain it as that.) I've loved the LJ community, but increasingly I find I've little time to keep up.

And - too many things have happened in between, since I last posted properly here. As I said saying goodbye to my previous journal, I'm not precisely the same person I was before. Writing and storing my thoughts here is no longer as natural as it was before. The bonds of the past may still keep this site dear to my heart, but the confines of the present no longer make me want to dwell here.

Still, I'll miss this place.

So to LJ I bid a fond farewell. Peace out, all.

Wish that I could keep up with NaNoBloMo. But it seems the wrong time for that kind of regularity
(to verbalise the monotony of my thoughts. They go in cycles - joy, pain, boredom, amusement, tiredness. I sleep. They drift, even in my subconsciousness.)

Even I don't have that much to say. I don't particularly like talking at people.
And my more curious thoughts are quiet, fleet-footed things. If they return to me, then I grant them refuge here, keeping them from time. If they don't return, then perhaps they were never mine to begin with.

I don't want to work right now.
And yet I do need to honour my commitments, to responsible. To rise to my feet again, wipe my mouth, dust my hands off, shove them in my pockets as I walk out of the door: as I should be.

I'm not so sure what any of it means any more.
I don't think I can take being strong and carrying on, or falling apart and losing myself again. Not right now.

The light is somewhere ahead, or maybe around me. I can't see right now. My eyes failed some time ago.
I think I'm breathing still. Hard to say, sometimes.

(I think I've lost something. I can't remember, I can't think of what it is. I think I feel an impression of it that remains in my memory. I don't think I can find it again on my own.
How can you miss something that you don't think you ever really knew?)




( songwords )

All things considered, I'd like to stop wanting to make people happy.

I'd like to stop trying to live up to expectations I perceive to be on me.
I can't fit myself into moulds.
I thought I knew who I was and what I wanted.
It's funny how life keeps showing me that I'm happiest when I simply stop thinking about myself. Especially true when it keeps my mind off my ability - my lack of, rather - to make things better.


If the expectations belong to the people who count in my life, then nurturing my relationships with them matter far more. These people will care about me no matter what I do. That is, I don't mean to say that I want to hurt them deliberately by my actions. But focusing on the expectations, rather than the love and the hope behind them, would break everyone down.

I need not make everyone involved unhappy, by proving myself still unable to be anything but myself. These people are able to accept my imperfections and my confusion, and I love them all the more for it.

The expectations of anyone else never truly mattered. I cannot and I need not try to please the entire world. I'd please nobody at all, least of all myself. I'll keep striving to be the best that I can be, as a person. By His strength and wisdom I'll learn. For that to be possible, I must not be crippled by an inward focus. I cannot be absorbed by my own hurt and misunderstanding, to be able to truly change.


I no longer want to keep giving the best of myself away so easily. Not this early in my life when I'm not yet fully whole, in the terrible, deadening belief that I'll be able to have all my fantasies realised in a day or a week. No more of that. I embrace my own weakness and uncertainty.

I am now free from needing to be so strong. I am free to let life take me, wherever it leads me.

"Life is difficult," says M. Scott Peck in the opening line of The Road Less Traveled. He goes on to say that this is a great truth because "once we accept this truth...Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." What does matter is what we do with it.

The difficulties and pains of our lives bring us to a fork in the road, a place where we must choose. And it's impossible to stay neutral. To allow our pain and difficulty to corrode our spirit, to make us hard and bitter, is to have chosen. TO keep living for some future escape is to refuse the present. To allow God to transform us in the situation as we are honest with him, as we invite his perspective, as we deal forthrightly with our difficulties, and as we open our lives to others in strenth and vulnerability - this is the road less traveled. And choosing that road will make all the difference.

- Ruth Haley Barton, Longing for More

It's almost like crossing items off the grocery list right now:

one weekend of hardcore Chinese
one afternoon to hammer out Insights&Reflections for PW
two weeks of relative normalcy and 'regular' classes
one week to iron out Oral Presentation
(to break & to build bridges, & place the capstone on our project)
two weeks of restructured timetabling
two months to pick up the pieces


C'est la vie.

(For words can't do, an rbt post.)
(It's funny how deliberate one needs to be, to say something of a passing moment so clearly, that the impressions last beyond its space and time.)

Hello all.

First, an early warning: I've just signed up for NaBloPoMo. Expect the worst. ;)

(I have the worst timing, no? The day before my H1 Chinese exam, the usual distraction strikes.
Shall we call this a brief study break? Hopefully yes, if I am able to kick myself off and continue revision in ten minutes flat.)

Now, why've I done this?

I suppose I relish the thought of the writing exercise. It's nice to have a good (validated, perhaps?) reason to regularly inflict my ramblings onto any and all who may suffer them.

Also, I'm curious to see

So here goes: the first post of November.


I cannot help but wonder why I am only able to organise my thoughts when I'm relaxed and writing self-indulgent (and nearly useless, academics-wise) flights of fancy. Stream-of-consciousness is perfectly acceptable when there's nobody who needs to know about these thoughts. There's no reason why I need to make any good sense here.

Yet my blogposts tend to take the form of carefully delineated, well-reasoned writing. My essays, under stress, turn tail and run from both organisation and rational sensibility.

The brainjam does not Bode Well. There still seems to be very good reasons why the Humanities Programme would have likely never suited me.

(Yet I do wonder what kind of a person I would be, had I been placed in such an environment.

It would've probably been comfortable, with like-minded people. Far more likely, it would have been exponentially harder to be pushed beyond what I can cope with, and far more devastating to have to compete with ex-classmates of mine who had gotten things together a long time back, and then some.

Maybe things are the way they are, because it's the best way in the long run. But how can we compare our circumstances to what might have been?)


To round off, a few thoughts on a couple of books I've been thinking about, but not been able to read.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading Lee Kong Chien's copy of Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, on one of the sporadic treks I've taken down to there, to turn bookworm with just my mum. (Good times.) It's a beautiful collection of essays on her love of books. Each is shaped by gentle wit and warmth, and seem to reflect a . I miss it. I want to curl up inside its pages, to soak in their goodness. Most definitely on the Christmas/birthday wishlist.

 Next, I'd really like to return to A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle. A perennial favourite of mine. (tintinvoyageur can attest that at one time during P6, I was carrying it down to recess every day.) I'm not sure why, but every time I read them, L'Engle's speak to me anew.

Not just these, but I borrowed La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith, Perilous Power by Noam Chomsky, and Coffee with Shakespeare, and a smattering of books on architecture.

So many books, so little time. Very depressing.


And indeed, time ticks on.

('m in a rather curious mood.
I don't want to stuck with the humdrum, the aching boredom, the grindstone, the endless days of doing not very much at all.

I don't want to waste my time, or anyone else's. I'm tired of feeling sick of the things that I do.

Yet that seems to be the status quo, for now.)

(I want to get out, to be out of the ordinary in my life. Yet I don't want to be confronted with the unfamiliar right now.
I'm just too raw and too tired to push myself into dealing with anything new.

I wonder why the adrenaline remains.
I'd like to be rid of the emotional loop-de-loops on this rollercoaster, all things considered.)

(I'd like to drink tea that won't keep dehydrating me. I keep forgetting to drink water after taking a cup, and feeling my bladder fill.)

(I don't want to sleep, to lose time to unconsciousness. I don't want to be awake, in this state. And lucid dreams are lies.)