wait, they don't love you like i love you

- Maps, Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Florence and the Machine - Never Let Me Go

and it's peaceful in the deep, the deep, the deep

cement kisses

"Judging by the looks on the faces of the people around him, Nicholas must have been fun to have around. But the reason why he was fun to have around... was that he was contrived and extraordinary. I began to wonder how much energy it took to be contrived and extraordinary all the time, and if he did possess that energy, where it came from."

*
"People were amused whenever Nicholas flaunted his exaggerated mannerisms. However, in his rare moments of reservedness or sombreness, when his effeminacy would still show but in a muted and natural way, the people around him would withdraw coolly. Perhaps this was because it only occurred to them during these moments, that what they had witnessed all this while was not merely a show or a joke, but an outward manifestation of something that was truly innate and deep-seated.

Then they would think of all the implications of his inclination, judgement would be passed and they would recoil.

I sensed that Nicholas was aware of this, and that was why he behaved the way he did. Sadly, the only way he could gain acceptance was as a jester or as something novel and intriguing. Hence ironically, the more abnormal he was, the easier he got along with others."

*

"Sometimes, I wish I could just pull out my soul from within me and just hang it somewhere for a while.. It aches so much that I just need to be relieved of my soul for a while."

- Peculiar Chris, Johann S.Lee

three moments when i was truly taken by the book, especially the last; quite a thought - as if a soul was a garment to be aired in the proverbial closet?

a gnarled inebriation

Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this, there was something restless and untamed about her. As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorceehood. Even her walk changed from a safe mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes.

She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims. What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her. An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. It was this that grew inside her..

*

On the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, everyone was a little wary of her. They sensed somehow that she lived in the penumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, people avoided her, made little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best of just Let Her Be.

On other days, she had deep dimples when she smiled.

Sometimes she was the most beautiful woman that Estha and Rahel had ever seen. And sometimes she wasn't.


- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

two beautiful girls told me how they loved The God of Small Things, and now, more than a year later, when it came to my turn to get acquainted with the book, they've somehow gotten detached from my life. the first made the decision to disappear from everyone. the other, too many factors eroded our friendship. it became gnarled. something to put away and not think about the luminous beauty it once held.

i really would like to meet Nicolette once more. there was something unfathomable about her - i doubt i could ever reach it but she was special.

*

Vick took out Keng Yang's guitar and strummed a few ditties on it. we were in camp and it was a dreary Sunday afternoon, rainy, gray, the kind best spent in bed with a book or a flick, ensconced in your blanket which is pulled up just right. so yeah, he tried to teach me the opening notes of this song which i can't recall right now. damn i never knew how difficult it was to even begin, everyone always make playing the guitar look so effortless. i couldn't even get the positioning of my fingers right, let alone make any sense of chords and what not. i think it runs in the immediate family, none of us has ever displayed the slightest affinity for musical instruments or singing. tragic.

"a liquid ache". i'm quite enthralled by the phrase; it inhabits within us all i think. inebriating.

Vick

"Twenty years. Let us measure it in stacks of photographs, in school fees, in shared meals, in the mellow delights of the connubial bed, in hard times shared, in the gnarled-ness of wistaria.

Let us measure it in trust, too heavy to weigh an ounce."

- An Equal Music, Vikram Seth

finally got around to An Equal Music. it's about this violinist, love, classical music, loads of Schuberts, Mozarts, Chopins - you'd think i'd be a complete sucker for such a heady theme (and usually you'd be spot on) but Vikram Seth's style is just a tad too maudlin, too sickly overwrought, even for me.

but as with the opera theme in Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, it's quite fascinating to learn more about classical music. i'm gonna pass the book to Vick, he's a cellist - it turns out he played in the chinese orchestra together with Rei during high school.

a person's countenance can be so unreliable sometimes. but then again, the best part probably lies in finding what's beneath that countenance. cello, cellist. delicate inflections for something so.. unwieldy? but then again, i'm no cellist, who am i to intrude upon a musician and his instrument?

crown of fronds

last night, i dreamt that we were moving to Japan. it was this place by the river, calling to mind of Clarke Quay actually, and the apartment had so many rooms, i had two for myself.

it was so rushed; our house here in my beloved Tanah Merah had already been sold and i had no say in anything.  for all of my fascination with Japan, i found myself in tears.

their faces appeared, serried together, all at once. no, i would not, could not bear the thought of being so far away from these faces. each face represents a multitude of memories, emotions, idiosyncrasies - they couldn't be traded for the magic villages of wonderland, Japan.

coalesce

i watched,
as beings coalesced,
souls tongued,
behind the veil,
by the sideline.

always by the sideline. why?

why
why
why

surely this cannot last.. forever?

of thimbles and buffoonery

Design Complicity's tree brolly. i haven't experienced such an urge of desire in a while.. apparently the leaf print on the brolly casts a penumbra (i've always loved this word but never had the chance to use it..) upon the user with the right sunlight filtering through and as demonstrated by the second photo, the effect is all the more enhanced when the shadow falls on a white article of clothing.

wouldn't this be perfect for our dreary weather of late? though with such a beautiful dainty, i'd be hesitant to use it in the rain.. it would really have came in useful late last night while i was running home in the rain... with this, i think i'd be springing about and twirling my pretty brolly like Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.

*

an invisible fleet-footed sprite pops its head out of the trees and stares in silent amazement at the peculiar giant spiraling around under its own peculiar tree. this peculiar tree - it gyrated with gawky thrusts and jerks, most undignified! so unlike this lordly one the sprite was currently perched on.. it had an unsavorily thin trunk, but most flummoxing of all, it appeared to be constructed out of air! where were the branches that supported the leaves? the peculiar tree's yummy crown of leaves looked to be wafting about on its own, almost a separate entity from the trunk..

and what was that peculiar giant doing with the tree? was it performing some sort of ceremonial dance in worship of the tree? now that the sprite could most certainly agree with.. but really, the giant was making such a ruckus, some sort of noise - "cining een der rane"? worship ought to be something quiet and respectful yet this giant was leaping and swirling about, its tree hovering precariously over its overly energetic worshipper. well now. worship was worship after all, and with that, the sprite gave a final sniff and went back to tending to its own tree, trimming it of nuisances and lovingly caressing the spots where it knew the tree preferred.

perhaps some day the sprite would go and say hello to its noisy new neighbour, yes perhaps.

karma delivery for psychopathic Roxanne. sometimes, in my obsessive otaku-Claymore mode, i forget how brutal the manga can be.

as much as i loathe the character Roxanne in Claymore, i do however think that the name is extremely pretty - it is unfortunate how the name seems to be plagued by unpleasant connotations. it was on my list of baby names for the future.

keng yang

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? 


I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. 


Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...

...and you finish off as an orgasm.”

- George Carlin


got this off my sergeant's Facebook page. he's the one who, unknowingly, inspired me to try my hand at my first poem. 


i'm very protective of my sergeants, i like them all very much. though i've never wanted to be a commander nor do i have the makings of one, when they tell me of their troubles of being a sergeant, as a subordinate, i can't help but feel for them.


times like these, i wish i could be the one protecting them instead.


on an extra note, i've finally told Vick, my chief sergeant, about my.. identity. to put it euphemistically. i am glad. it's slightly ironic; despite being the sergeant i'm closest to, he ended up the last person knowing. in camp anyway.


but there you have it, all the people on my shift - with whom i'm comfortable enough with, and have enough trust in - now knows. it's a weight off my shoulders. 


edit: there are a couple more i wish i could tell. oh well, time will present the opportunity.

so called

I would die for this, that, those
chh.

woven with 5% integrity, 2% honesty and 93% posturing

fibres of oppressed sweat, yarns of countless dreams


lift off the precious glass dome,
confront the dainties
confirm with a
touch
sniff
lick
suddenly
the magic goes poof!
the shiny packaged delusion,
deflates with a wheeze.

it's not so precious after all.
(revelation of the year!)

who started it?
Chanel, Gucci or boss of the mob, Louey V?
puppeteer of paupers and princes alike
Chimaera of untold proportions,
powered by shackled minions
gorges on foolish millions

Barbie-nators and Ken-bots
stomp stomp stomp, pout pout pout
yet even the Plastic giggles
at the sad hilarity
of a show putting on a show.

wee ping

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.


- Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

a sense of conviction

"A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows.."

- terminal note from Maurice, E.M. Forster

the sum of liberty

normalcy,
once so alien
prodded aside
with the longest yardstick
and the snootiest sniff

metamorphosing
into something warm
and infinitely curious

golden limbs

scraggly hair

schlumpy clothes

never seemed so,

dare i say it -

attractive

normalcy,

used to be 

trampled upon

face smashed into earth

common as dirt

in its crudeness

mundanity

provinciality 

simple-mindedness,

the saplings of

happiness

are young

and possible

the veneers

of hedonism

nihilism

perfectionism 

narcissism 

self pity

self hate

self indulgence 

flash

bang

sound

fury

blah blah blah

shall wither

against the bright sunlight

of the unbridled youth

in all his possible happiness

pray for it, to touch you.

vestiges

found this inside a recently acquired book, An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. Kindle and its ilk can't replicate these glimmers to another life. i like M's succinctness.

*

He stared after him. His face was silent, closed, yet sickly fascinating; it drew in the confidences of Turmoil and Pain, themselves the underlings of Loneliness, an Overlord so pervasive, its tendrils marauded across his features, seeking to fester, germinate and eventually, vanquish that fragile mien.

*

a snippet dreamed up while cycling at the park with my baby sister. i always get small, random snippets popping into my mind, but never the entire story unfortunately.

on the flipside, Singapore Writers Festival starts this friday! who's up for it?!

Your face, it looked so lonely and painful, like you couldn't bear it - the little girl whose body was just half my size, taught me that tears can flow from silver eyes as well.


- Norihiro Yagi, Claymore

alike, unalike, alike

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. 


Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.


- Yann Patel, Life of Pi

shane

told me, that i am not empty, i am FULL.

tonight, i started with Empty by The Cranberries

All my plans fell through my hand 

They fell through my hands on me 

All my dreams, it suddenly seems 

It suddenly seems empty

Shane told me to stop listening to songs with titles like "Empty". he brought me this instead:

i was quite taken aback when i heard the song. then i smiled. it was quite a remedy. 

i told him he was one of a kind. i thought about the responses i would have likely received from the usual sources and decided that no one else would have reacted like he did and that i would make an effort. i need to start writing again, i felt this desperately a few nights ago in camp.

an anodyne, i need an anodyne. 

dithering, withering, curdling - i don't want that, i don't do that - what would happen to all the beautiful words i've gathered lately? what would happen to lampoonery, mesonoxian, anodyne, inviolate? they need to be cultivated, caressed, tickled under the chin, unleashed, hurtled against that which we do not want to remember.

chrysalis - the tutelary cocoon from which a butterfly emerges. how strange, how strange, a beauteous word as such to perform a perfunctory duty. nevertheless - retreat, retreat! into the chrysalis, most sterile and more importantly, anodynic. 

Shane told me, i am not empty, i am FULL

a little bit of this

There is the story of baby Krishna, wrongly accused by his friends of eating a bit of dirt. His foster mother, Yashoda, comes up to him with a wagging finger. "You shouldn't eat dirt, you naughty boy," she scolds him. "But I haven't," says the unchallenged lord of all and everything, in sport disguised as a frightened human child. "Tut! Tut! Open your mouth," orders Yashoda.

Krishna does as he is told. He opens his mouth. Yashoda gasps.

She sees in Krishna's mouth the whole complete entire timeless universe, all the stars and planets of space and the distance between them, all the lands and seas of the earth and the life in them; she sees all the days of yesterday and all the days of tomorrow; she sees all ideas and all emotions, all pity and all hope, and the three strands of matter; not a pebble, candle, creature, village or galaxy is missing, including herself and every bit of dirt in its truthful place.

"My Lord, you can close your mouth," she says reverently.

- Yann Martel, Life of Pi

23/09/11

Bedok Library's children section, baby sis, Chinzy Minzy, Wee Ping, Yasee, Cuppage Plaza, Avalon

It was only a hopeless fancy,

It passed like an April day,

But a look and a word and the dreams they stirred

They have stolen my heart away!

George Orwell, 1984

colour and texture, that is. i've left the austerity behind for a bit, to correspond with a newfound vivacity in this stage of my life.

mechanisation

"As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck."

George Orwell, 1984

15/09/11

 

Chin, Lester, Kazumi, baby, Zulkhairi, Supermama, Daniel

crest

"She had sung it so many times this morning he had had the chance to memorize all the words. It didn't matter that he didn't understand the language, he knew what it meant.

Again and again he sang the chorus, almost whispering for fear someone might hear him, mock him, punish him..

Still, he wished he could open himself up the way she did, bellow it out, dig inside himself to see what was really there. It thrilled him when she sang the loudest, the highest. If he didn't have his rifle to hold in front of him he would have embarrassed himself every time, her singing brought about such a raging, aching passion that his penis stiffened before she had finished her first line, growing harder and harder as the song progressed until he was lost in a confusion of pleasure and terrible pain, the stock of his rifle brushing imperceptibly up and down, leading him towards relief.

He leaned back against the wall, dizzy and electrified. They were for her, these furious erections.

Every boy there dreamed of crawling on top of her, filling her mouth with their tongues as they pushed themselves inside her. They loved her, and in these fantasies that came to them waking and sleeping, she loved them in return.

But for Cesar it was more than that. Cesar knew he was hard for the music. As if music was a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck."

- Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

Passion chokes the flower until she cries no more
Possessing all the beauty hungry still for more

- Delerium, Silence featuring Sarah McLachlan 

ambuscades

"Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering."

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

too cute!

STREETFSN

colour, floppy hat, romper, the immersion in character.. these lads are my brethren. adore!

harlowe gold

Malinconia, ninfa gentile
Malinconia, ninfa gentile,
la vita mia consacro a te;
I tuoi piaceri chi tiene a vile,
ai piacer veri nato non è.
Fonti e colline chiesi agli dei;
m'udiron alfine, pago io vivrò,
né mai quel fonte co' desir miei
né mai quel monte trapasserò.

Melancholy, gentle nymph,
I devote my life to you.
One who despises your pleasures
Is not born to true pleasures.
I asked the gods for fountains and hills;
They heard me at last; I will live satisfied
Even though, with my desires, I never
Go beyond that fountain and that mountain

- Vincenzo Bellini


while my knowledge of opera is resoundingly scant, i found the verse behind Bellini's aria too beautiful to pass up, so i went searching for other versions of the translation, and chanced upon one that didn't seem as.. ossified?

this is aghrivaine's handiwork:


Melancholy, gentle nymph,
I consecrate my life to you;
He who your pleasures despises,
To true pleasures is not born.

Mountains and hills I begged of God;
At last I was heard, and I will live content,
Never beyond the hills did I desire to go,
Never beyond the mountains will I go past.


much preferred.

it turns out aghrivaine's quite a character (i do love his phrasing!) - he describes his journal as"Quotidian
Loveliness: Observations of the everyday, the sublime, and the sublimely everyday."

these accidental meanderings really are the best, aren't they?

i was introduced to Malinconia, Ninfa Gentile while reading Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. the book deals with a bunch of high profile political/wealthy figures who find themselves kidnapped. along the way, they develop an uncertain relationship with their kidnappers, Stockholm Syndrome if you will.

music, or to be specific, opera, is unquenchably meshed with the book (hence, Bel Canto), with a main anchor in the form of Roxane Cross, a soprano whose aural prowess is tenderly described in many recurring moments, but particularly memorable in these:

"He looked instead to Roxane Cross, whose face he had tirelessly studied in program notes and CD inserts. Her shoulders were sloping. Her neck, perhaps, could be longer. A longer neck? He cursed himself. What was he thinking? None of it mattered. No one could see her objectively anyway. Even those who saw her for the first time, before she had opened her mouth to sing, found her radiant, as if her talent could not be contained in her voice and so poured like light through her skin...

..they were so taken by the beauty of her voice that they wanted to cover her mouth with their mouth, drink in. Maybe music could be transferred, devoured, owned. What would it mean to kiss the lips that had held such a sound?

... because of her singing, they all went away feeling moved, feeling comforted, feeling, perhaps, the slightest tremors of faith."

- Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

though several elements in the plot remained highly questionable, Ms.Patchett has enabled even the most mundane of subjects to stretch out, an organic, languid undulation of potent emotions - and that, for me, matters the most. i'll be posting more excerpts from the book to be sure.

words of the day: quotidian, soliloquy, ossify

cynosure

Miss Eyre?

see also, the sublime Bianca and Aino

treading waters

 
 

The Sartorialist 

i am really enjoying the Stockholm batch of photos from the Sartorialist lately.. there's something in their water.

there's a deftness in their succinct ensembles, a fondness for old sneakers (don't i know it), fantastic hair, and an uncanny knack for proportions - cue the lady in #2; a well-played twosome of navy and aubergine hues, trousers cropped at the ridiculously right level and out pops those Prada spring 2007 sandals i'd so admired! is it natural to be particularly fascinated with her extra long navy sleeves? a jaunty cap swooshes off the entire composition, winsomely.

i don't know that girl reading, but i know the spirit.

equinox

"Maurice opened his hand. Luminous petals appeared in it.

'You care for me a little bit, I do think,' he admitted, 'but I can’t hang all my life on a little bit. You don’t. You hang yours on Anne. You don’t worry about whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it’s big enough to hang a life on. I can’t hang mine on to the five minutes you spare me from her and politics.'"

Maurice, Edward Morgan Forster

asparagus expelliarmus

reprieve

 

i have been besotted with Claymore, a Japanese manga, for a couple of years now. the above character is Cassandra, who is nicknamed Cassandra the Dust Eater for her unique fighting style.

consider Cassandra the Vaccum Cleaner lol. kudos to Memphis for the chuckles!

P.S.

Claymore is a wonderful series should anyone care to take it up - i guarantee you'll be hooked.

hanging on for dear life

blelow is a page that struck me while reading E.M. Forster's Maurice.

"The old man rambled ahead. One ought to be good-kind-brave: all the old advice. Yet it was sincere. It came from a living heart.

'Why?' he interrupted. 'Grandpapa, why?'

'The light within-'

'I haven't one.' He laughed, lest emotion should master him. 'Such light as I had went out six weeks ago. I don't want to be good or kind or brave. If I go on living I shall be - not those things: the reverse of them. I don't want that either; I don't want anything.'

'The light within-'

Maurice had neared confidence, but they would not have been listened to. His grandfather didnt, couldn't understand. He was only to get 'the light within - be kind', yet the phrase continued the rearrangement that had begun inside him. Why should one be kind and good? For someone's sake - for the sake of Clive or God or the sun?

But he had no one.

No one except his mother mattered and she only a little. He was practically alone, and why should he go on living? There was really no reason, yet he had a dreary feeling he should, because he had not got Death either; she, like Love, had glanced at him for a minute, then turned away, and left him to 'play the game'. And he might have to play as long as his grandfather, and retire as absurdly."

*

this is a snap i took of Kenny and Karen's (the owners of BooksActually) copy of Maurice at their An Ode to Penguin exhibition a few weeks back. i really liked this cover as compared to the modern versions; too ostentatious. i was ridiculously happy when i managed to procure Maurice for myself at my favourite Bras Brasah haunt - with the exact same cover!

Maurice has proven to be a brave companion, one to keep by one's side. i'm looking out for the film version next, and perhaps another book by E.M. Forster - A Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread, perhaps? aren't the names beautiful?

i'm grasping at this, at Maurice, at the stacks of books, at this blog; desperately. it's somewhat cathartic but it's not enough; i'm hanging on for dear life as it is.

one to another

a vote for the gentle light
burned senseless by other people’s constant
depression,
I pull the curtains apart,aching for the gentle light.
it’s there, it’s there
somewhere,
I’m sure.

oh, the faces of depression, expressions
pulled down into the gluey dark.
the bitter small sour mouths,
the self-pity, the self-justification is
too much, all too much.
the faces in shadow,
deep creases of gloom.

there’s no courage there, just the desire to
possess something––admiration, fame, lovers,
money, any damn thing
so long as it comes easy.
so long as they don’t have to do
what’s necessary.
and when they don’t succeed they
become embittered,
ugly,
they imagine that they have
been slighted, cheated,
demeaned.

then they concentrate upon their
unhappiness, their last
refuge.
and they’re good at that,
they are very good at that.
they have so much unhappiness
they insist upon your sharing it
too.

they bathe and splash in their
unhappiness,
they splash it upon you.

it’s all they have.
it’s all they want.
it’s all they can be.

you must refuse to join them.
you must remain yourself.
you must open the curtains
or the blinds
or the windows
to the gentle light.
to joy.
it’s there in life
and even in death
it can be
there.

— Charles Bukowski

i often think i have little affinity with poems; too arcane, too cryptic, almost chaotic - but now and then, i'm pleasantly reminded that it may be otherwise, as exampled in Mr.Bukowski's A Vote for the Gentle Light. i adore the name. today at least, an accidental meandering has led me to something beautiful and true.

yearn

BARBARA: 

"People languish for years with partners who are clearly from another planet. We want so much to believe that we’ve found our other. It takes courage to recognise the real as opposed to the convenient. When I was young, I had such a vision of myself. I dreamt I’d be someone to be reckoned with, you know, in the world. But one learns one’s scale. I’ve such a dread of ending my days alone."

*


BARBARA: 

"People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely, but of the drip, drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. What it’s like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue."



-Patrick Marber, Notes on a Scandal (adapted from the eponymous novel by Zoë Heller)


it hits me straight to the core. i must confess that i've neither read Ms.Heller's book nor the film adaptation, but they've become a priority after this.

thank you for the introduction, jieqiang.

i was listening to It's A Fire by my favourite band, Portishead, when i received the quotes. i'm quite aware that it's an overload of melancholy, but it's one of those days that hang around you like a flogged albatross.

It's a fire
These dreams they pass me by
This salvation I desire
Keeps getting me down


Portishead

again and again

1984, George Orwell

have you ever?

"I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation."

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

partially restored

 

this is Shan Yeh. seeing her on La Mode Outre has reconciled me with the site partially; it's been such a long while since a subject captured for La Mode Outre has piqued my interest. 

i particularly admired:

1. her sense of proportion - the navy cardigan over the tiered skirt (dress?) creates such an interesting block of stories, pulled off particularly well due to her slender, boyish frame.

2. her subtle socks

3. her.. carriage? if i should run into Shan Yeh on the streets, i'd make her out to be this character, unobtrusively making her way through the crowds, a quiet certainty in her gait.. an intangible commune with like-minded creatures, i should imagine.

carriage? got to ease up with the Victorian novels.

another slant

"Fashion is primitive in its insistence on exhibitionism, which withers in isolation. The catwalk fashion show with its incandescent hype is its apotheosis. A ritualized gathering of connoiseurs and the spoilt at a spotlit parade of snazzy pulchritude, it is an industrialized version of the pagan festivals of renewal - at the end of each seasonal display, a priesthood is enjoined to carry news of the omens to the masses."

Stephen Bayley "Fashion: Being and Dressing", 1991

schadenfreude

"What a fearful thing it is that any language should have a word expressive of the pleasure which  men feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing. And yet in more than one (language) such a word is found... in the Greek 'epikhairekakia', in the German '-'."

Richard C. Trench "On the Study of Words", 1852

arbitrary

god knows muuj has been at the back of my mind for awhile now, ever since i said goodbye to what once was.

this is a strange, permutable period in my life, and i'm still meandering through, sifting, grappling. this unsettling feeling has been gnawing, gnawing away.. i've never been so unsure of where i'm going.

i've never been one to flirt with depression, suicidal tendencies, running away from home, dysfunctional family yada yada the usual load that comes with the ripening of adolescence. so this.. "identity crisis" (since we're getting cliched..) has left me quite unprepared! i wouldn't say i'm the most assertive or decisive person, far from it, but i'd truly believed that fashion was to be my career.

yet now i'm flickering, flickering between the old, welcoming refuge of words, beautiful words and.. fashion. i italicised the word. its denizens have often put me off, so caught up in the ceaseless parade of ostentatious, even voracious consumerism; nary a shade of sincerity.

i was losing interest, rapidly. yet here i am, blogging again. it won't be the same as it used to be, though i did rue the loss of interaction between that tiny band of insightful individuals and myself. i know not of how they came to say hello, nor some of their identities, but therein lies the charm i suppose.


it feels good to be writing.
  
She cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! ... had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly."

i'm falling all over in love with Pride & Prejudice once more.

over chinese new year's; my maternal grandmother braiding my sister's hair.

she was recently hospitalised, but she's doing alright. i'm glad my mother had the foresight to urge me to take these photos - they seem much more timely now, especially with her recent incident. we don't know how many more chinese new year celebrations she'll be able to host.