this world is sickSICK

coldglasslove @ 2005-11-07T00:48:00

2005-11-06T17:03:07Z

somehow i was stuck in a groove thinking "I AM A FORMER SHELL OF MYSELF" when you said 'shelled'. shelled? what? shelled? oh yes i am confused. how many words to go till i reach my word limit? shellshocked. bitten well and deep into my soft-shelled heart. what can i say that will not be inappropriate or cruel? i wish you well? if that is what you are saying, that you must go away, then the only kind thing i can do is bid you well on your journey out. was i so failing in my attempts to be opaque? can i leave these things without being cruel, i am not leaving sentiment to rot, i am not trying to be cruel, but at least i think they should be put to rest, to gentle slumber; which i thought the months would do quite adequately. but apparently i am wrong. i am sorry i feel like i'm being cruel anyway. i probably am. cruelty. i never wanted that to be a trait of mine. you do not know how i am dying but i am clinging to some former semblance of living but GOD KNOWS I DON'T KNOW A SINGLE THING ABOUT WHATS HAPPENING ANYMORE. i do not know if i will ever know what it means to be happy in the near future. you know the time you said even then you wanted to be there to listen. well i guess i messed it up good that time and now. i dont know how to get back there, or anywhere really. i'd tell you what a pickle this all is now, what a disaster i made by myself anyway. but i have to write my essay now and i really dont have the time to do this now.

i am weak and

please stop. (stop what? i should stop it. stop what?)

or i will not know what to do.

coldglasslove @ 2005-02-02T12:26:00

2005-02-02T04:33:16Z

so hate me. but i am so tired i am almost beyond caring. not out of lack of caring for you but lack of energy to lift a finger to move oneself off the railtracks of an oncoming train. so live and let die. are you seriously expecting me to deal with this when i haven't properly slept in two days? what does it matter? your happiness, my happiness, anyone's happiness; what does it matter any more? nothing. it means nothing. why do the giant moths keep coming to my room? you said moths to a flame. not in error, a candle burns at both ends. explode and burn and consume each other. then we are nothing. the power of broadcast, word is virus, spliced messages unintended audience, infect and destroy. william burroughs says tape recorder 1 is host tape recorder 2 is access tape recorder 3 is death by adam's shame staring him in the face. this is tape recorder 3 and i am god ensuring that the viral infection complete. you read this and die. i told you not to read.

coldglasslove @ 2005-01-30T13:29:00

2005-02-02T04:24:41Z

i rationalise that i am always inclined to meet you for drinks because i figure we both need a good stiff drink to make the living a bit easier. of course you dont know that, no one knows except me, someone could kill me on the way and no one would know why i was there, except you. (he. does. not. know.) why do i relish personal secrets like these? dark ugly secrets. soon i will be like the madwoman in the attic, but locked there from my own doing, loveless, hopeless. what is this mess? i dont want to hurt mark but he wont understand why i need to see you. hell i don't understand why i need to see you. you'll have the wrong idea (or will you) and he'll have the wrong idea (or will he?) and i have this idea trapped in my head and i am trying to do you good. it hurts every time i see something that reminds me of the past and i can't show it because i dont want to hurt anyone and its not working and i'm probably fucking things up like this. wengfong if i fall in love with you again i will most certainly lose you for good. mark if i told you my fear that i will tire of this and am beginning to, you would flee this ship like the sinking boat it is and i will close my eyes and it will be the same inside and out--alone again (how do you work on things like that? its not like working on a spare tire its intangible to begin with). sometimes when no one else is around in this room alone i already feel that way. but there was a time when conversation between us was magic. was perfectly synced and everything fit together so perfectly i couldn't have asked for anything more but the continents we are on seem to have shifted imperceptibly and surely you would have felt the little earthquakes but all i am dying to find out is HOW DO I GET BACK THERE AGAIN HOW PLEASE TELL ME how do i get back to that place. i dont want to lose you.

i am so fucking tired so tired so fucking tired do you know that. no one can know this.

coldglasslove @ 2005-01-19T11:51:00

2005-01-19T03:51:48Z

knowing my name, my room phone number, the location of my room number in hall, my philosophy, the institution at which i live and study, my sexual habits, and calling me gorgeous -- still doesn't entitle anyone to proposition me for sex. or phone sex. i may be liberal but i have no reason to sleep around with total strangers. i'm not a desperate housewife. i may be very curious, insistent on wanting to know who you are first, but its because do you know how creepy it is to have faceless voices tell you they want to fuck you now? then again, sounds like a really kinky fantasy, but lets not go there. i peer out of the window nervously as you tell me about how close by you are, how you want to drive down now and lick me, how you've kissed me before, although i certainly don't think you're any of the boys i consciously kissed. don't mistake my curiosity as a come-on. gee i think i'm going to be latching my doors just in case. if i leave them open will you mistakenly take that as an indecent invitation, secret admirer?

i feel vaguely betrayed by my body.

in the morning i felt tragic again.

2005-01-18T12:55:09Z

really, i'm just speaking rubbish again. but i'm dying. dear god i'm dying can you please do something about it. i'm dying. i'm sitting on the arm of a library chair with my back facing him so he can't see me cry over nothing, really, and that's the worst part. over nothing. the voice in my head, it wants me dead. i give up trying not to leak all over the carpet so i leave the library, back into the slipstream where i can't walk ten metres without meeting an acquiantance who wants something from me, faces are blurry, stumbling back to room and lights off. in the lull, he calls me on the phone to ask me if i am okay. i'm okay, i say. but i don't say that there's a knot in my right lung from failing to cough up some of the words which are still stuck in my throat and maybe the pain's because my migratory heart has been wandering all around again.

just so that you know i really do have a cough and a stabbing pain in the right lung.

coldglasslove @ 2005-01-18T13:26:00

2005-01-18T05:27:48Z

so Occam's Razor states that when multiple explanations are available for a phenomenon, the simplest version is preferred. so i can code html backwards with my eyes closed but my custom-made 404 php errors coming back to mock me after they reinstall PHP is completely out of my league to handle. children get tired of games. i sit in the calm centre of the dark room and the devices go off one by one and i type A A A A A A A A A A H H H H H

this is my playground, and surely you realised that i see everything, there is no stone i leave unturned in my wanderings, i know where everything is, where everyone's words are, and knowing the power of personal publishing it is the same reason why i remain cautious not to list familiar ties like damning fingerprints at a murder scene, the sick cycle of connectivity, thoughts on a treadmill. i am proficient at the art of being intentionally vague, creeping in shadows, if i wanted to, no one would ever know this exists, just as others have gone unnoticed..... but i can keep secrets, can i? can i? i have kept secrets for you. i still continue to do so. dear you, i dont know what to say..... to an archive of letters that shouldn't read, pages i shouldn't browse, i want to hold this page in, like this breath, for as long as i can, until i cannot hold it on any longer or i perish, choking, bereft of air. when do you think that will be?

astray

2005-01-17T00:05:37Z

george chua / aspidistra fly at the substation
a pale blush of nostalgia in 8mm light bursts, brakhage splashes and glimpses of boxed homes and limbs and a floral dress. small frail hands with soft slow touch washing up on the seaside. i wish i could settle with something simple and beautiful like that. instead of being clingy at road junctions, and so eager for another sip like as if the hum in my head will tell me something i don't know already.

restless, that twitch in the leg is my electrical need to walkrunjump. cure this nervous disease. i must admit i like to pretend that i am on holiday, that everything is alien to me and i'm seeing it for the first time. so i don't have to use the building this way, i don't have to turn the door handle this way, i don't have to turn on the light. i'm going to tear it down piece by piece. deconstruct. take me away so this can feel new again. i need to forget to remember. now i do. and what about you. here is the confessional. what about you. i want to know everything about you still.

coldglasslove @ 2005-01-14T15:03:00

2005-01-14T07:06:04Z

to my horror, i only jolted awake twenty minutes after pharmacy class was to have started but thank god for friends who will hold seats for you in huge alienating rooms full of faceless science students and ah! such beautiful music! thomas surprised me with his band's CD and it is gorgeous so gorgeous i could just explode. after postcolonialism & postmodernism class (such dirty words!) mitch bought me lunch at the munchie monkey, where he regaled me with tales of his decadent winter in vegas; sin city, lush hotels, strip clubs, pimping taxi drivers and casinos; pretty girls make graves and interpol were on the huge MTVasia screen behind us and the weather was dazzling. i was on my way back to my hall when min called, telling me to look out of my window. "but i'm not even in my room," i said to her. "but i just saw someone walking around your room!" she told me, so i ran back to my door fumbling for the key half expecting another bizarre haunting, but it was another close brush with occam's razor; for quite apparently she had mistaken my canadian neighbour's room for mine.

i feel ridiculously chipper and i want to read Jane Eyre nownownow.

his voice on the phone sounds more familiar to me than my family.

coldglasslove @ 2005-01-13T19:45:00

2005-01-13T12:14:40Z

my teenage declaration for the week: got lucky with a random class and could be having cute redhead tutor who i've been wanting to get to know for the longest time ever. she of smart chiseled features in her tight men shirts and skate pants and that confident swagger in her step. i feel like doing anything other than the work at hand. two 4am nights spent slaving over codes, forced friendly conversations, hall dinners that surprisingly haven't killed me yet. sometimes he gives me bruises and papercuts but rough handling is fine by me. DEATH BY PAPERCUT! speaking of which, i feel at my most inventive when bogged down with work. i believe we should start dealing in invisible ink that glows under UV light, form pirate booths with expert stamp artists who will replicate the doorstamp at clubs so that one can avoid the cover charge at pricey events. i believe sleep is a drug, each day i feel like i'm waking up in another continent in someone else's body. i live on cheap thrills. cheap thrills. spill your guts. i want to know everything about everyone. act sober and no one will suspect a thing. there are times when "this is just the way things are" is not the answer i want to hear. but there is no other way.

we should live such that there will be nothing to regret. at the same time, the way i am is not an adequate excuse for the way i treated you. on the cusp of morning, holding you close in the car, it was noble of you to say those things, but you should not make excuses for me, it is better for my conscience to feel deeply hurt by the circumstances as well, to suffer silently wanting nothing but to give you happiness yet knowing i cannot; these tenuous things. this is why so many people write love songs. do you feel alive now, hurting, wanting?

---

01 the faint - in concert

you sit outside in the dark and get nicked by the strobe light while we're playing indoors.
we play in a bar, we play in a basement. we play in a room where the mix isn't right.
the help at the door, the age to get in, the artist is smug, they don't sound like they did.
we're ready to move, the crowd is a stare. if you've got things on your mind, SHAKE THEM OFF.
that's why we have come to collect your bodies from your lovers
and pause all the suffering... at least start pacing
you're not on the list, you paid to get in.
your boyfriend is mad, it was something you did.
in concert tonight, the bass drum is quick.
if you've got things on your mind, SHAKE THEM OFF

02 junior boys - when i'm not around

when the day is over
where could you be?
do you look past the lights and
think where is he?

when i'm not around
how do you relate
to the night in front of you
and the things we never said?

sometimes alone
in the club where i met you
my feelings are cruel
but i never regret you

when i'm not around
will you let me know
keep me on my game
dont let your feelings show

it seems i disappear
i'm really right behind
through the streets i'm always near
right through the edge of the night

there's that look that you give
when there's a light on the floor
the haze of countless nights
is coming in through the door

when i'm not around
who do you revive?
what name is on your mind
when the morning comes alive?

it seems i disappear
i'm really right behind
through the streets i'm always near
right through the edge of the night

it seems i disappear
i'm really right behind
through the streets i keep you near
right through the edge of the night

come on i'll take you home
you've been away too long
then we should stay at home
i think i'll know you tonight

03 cut and paste stories by people who can't write but know exactly what it means to love

Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colourful, marvellous feathers. In short, he was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing joy to everyone who saw him.

One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.

But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird's ability to fly.

And she felt alone.

And she thought: 'I'm going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again.'

The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage.

She looked at the bird everyday. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: 'Now you have everything that you could possibly want.' However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.

One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds.

If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realised that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.

Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. 'Why have you come?' she asked Death. 'So that you can fly once more with him across the sky,' Death replied. 'If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again.'

sugar on the six-fingered beast

2005-01-13T08:08:19Z

in the evening i sat in the backseat of the taxi with forty beautiful balloons, forty sweet trembly balloons eagerly leaning against the windows and ten more huddling in the car trunk. pressed into the seat, holding on to these flimsy threads. being left alone has become a road with the street lights fading out at night, as the lights dim and you're guided by dim headlights that hardly light anything more than a few centimetres from your toes; it is confusion and a new realisation: i am branded. i scrawl "easy" on my wrist, met by raised eyebrows and puzzlement in dim hotel rooms, surrounded by un/familiar faces and then some. words, these are just words. my feeble words. you don't understand, i say, i can't forget, so i might as well write it out. infidelity by memory? forget it. have another drink. but the alcohol has begun to hurt, racing from sugar to acetaldehyde too quickly. perhaps i am addicted to the poison, the pain, the hurt, if love is an excuse to get hurt. this could be the time of my life. blindfolded and dancing in smoky clubs. don't let me mix your drinks. don't let me into the closet. don't bang on it while we're in there. shut up we'll live our lives any way we like even if we don't know what we're at. somewhere something must be going right.

its like that moment in that christian death song which i love so much, the one where there is part in which rozz goes, "love?"; and in that voice a question -- divorced, strange, estranged.

the picnic. in the botanical gardens. beatific scenes of balloons hiding in soft brush where spiders creep and spin their gossamer webs, rats scamper across the lawn like scouts before the army is unleashed upon us. i watch a small boy wrapping bread around stones and throwing them to the swans (i am disturbed, disturbed). sitting in the middle of a gaudy purple victorian gazebo, it is mark's ex who is one of the first to arrive to the picnic, marked by the somewhat awkward lull in speech. i ponder long and hard about the word Attraction; one wonder, without passing judgement on anyone or anything, what is it that mark used to see in her? or then, what is it that mark sees in me? and ablutely crossing the street, one wonders, what is it that weng sees in me? this i do not know. they say that understanding what other people see in you tells you more about the other person than yourself. people are such mystery. or do you suppose they should have remained myths all their lives? that i shouldn't have so carelessly stumbled in and out the door. mark is such a sweet boy such a sweet sweet thing sometimes i'm afraid i'm going to mishandle him too. stolen walks in the rain. the hospital across the road makes me think of suicide cases and ambulances. you already know what ambulances remind me of (the artist). along these city streets there are endless connections to be made in the mind. layer upon layer. superimposition. each road is accidentally laced with nostalgia, to choke you in bitter saccharine.

school starts tomorrow so farewell sweet holiday.

coldglasslove @ 2005-01-06T19:35:00

2005-01-06T11:35:36Z

01 the thief of nothing

having drunk myself silly the night before, i briefly awoke to someone rapping on the door and opening it. without glasses i could not see anything beyond black and white stripes. in the morning when trying to relate this incident to mark it came to my attention that he latched the door all along, with the only key that could open that door well buried and untouched in my possession.

02 nightcrawlers

having dozed off after a nightcap, i was roused back to consciousness by a mysterious girl in dark blue, crawling up the side of my bed. i shut my eyes and then my eyes were open on this side, and i was awake and alone in my cold room. then i closed them and i was back in the dream again. and she was there again, soft and warm hands on me.

03 delirium

i dreamt that i was by the riverside, where i picked up a jar floating in the calm waters. i woke up and found the very same jar next to me on my bed, and as i touched the cold smooth surface of the glass i realised that i wasn't awake because it was rationally impossible for this to be happening. i opened my eyes and found myself awake again but the jar had mysteriously vanished. they say that a way to find out if you are still asleep is to see if you can switch on the lights so i climbed down the bed to turn on the lights. i must have been asleep as the room remained dark. i opened my eyes.

- - -

04 liner notes of Oasis' Morning Glory by paolo hewitt

Coming down off the nova near the boiled egg that is the Royal Albert Hall, we watch Paul's sun crossed with John's star and hold ice cream hands. Someone slipped on a cassette as the one you wanted left with someone else but somehow it was cool because as the music filled the shadows, you heard a sound that was a million miles away from fakery and a step away from your heart.

Just like it always did, this sound puts the swagger back into your step, the rush into your blood but somehow, and I don't know how, they had become deeper, wider, soulful, better at their craft, inspired by so many things like a world that is tilting who knows where and the applause they always knew was theirs but waited so impatiently to receive. Words cut you from all angles, backed up by a monumental sound that rises high, high and high, to crash against your rocks and then changes, majestically and magically, to soothe the wounds inside.

As you are dragged inside on this trip abandon, you hear the sound of a council estate singing its heart out, you hear the clink of loose change that is never enough to buy what you need, boredom and poverty, hours spent with a burnt out guitar, dirty pubs and cracked up pavements, violence and love, all rolled into one, and now all this.

In the end you flip over and start again because now you are not isolated. They have gone to work so that you can go home. High above the day turns pink and you feel your feet lift above the ground as new roads open up in front of you. In this town, the jury is always rigged but the people know. They always know the truth. Believe. Belief. Beyond. Their morning glory.

05 three tracks for the sea

crustation - face the waves
sven van hees - tsunami (inside my soul)
jeff buckley - nightmares by the sea

coldglasslove @ 2005-01-04T09:01:00

2005-01-04T01:07:03Z

lush 99.5fm might just be my new incentive to finally try to fix that damn radio at home.

rouge, drum & bass, four jugs and eugene didn't seem very serious about his drink so i reckon we helped him polish off a portion of his share as well, drinking till the feet refuse to hold the body up, i think it takes skill to know how to drink till it really hurts but without throwing up, it feels good to have someone bring you home when the alcohol has your motor coordination completely shot to hell (all these luxuries we take for granted). secretly i am still convinced that the boy has secretly stolen my lighter to stop me from smoking. before rouge we had a Talk, the kind of Talk that puts the fear in your bones, the kind that pours revelations over you like honey and feathers that you can't shake off, perhaps giving a slight resemblance to birds but with absolutely no possibility of flight.

i miss you.

fashioning my self escape

2005-01-02T04:04:51Z

SO THIS IS THE NEW YEAR

ushered in with arms interlocked while sipping wine with a sweet boy in a strange house.

resent me and my weak moral structure. loyalty? sounds like a word that went out of fashion last season. trust? i have a sneaky semblance of it, one that would seem completely incompatible with my lack of loyalty. peich says i'm a classic textbook case of wanting it all. this is actually inaccurate. i am a classic textbook case of a random particle, my haphazard trajectory formed from colliding and ricocheting off walls and surfaces. random events occur to me and then people make up theories and reasons for why i do them. it was good to see you again, and that much needed glass of port at your place. you drove me downtown because i was supposed to meet him, i really appreciated that; he was upset at me, sick of me smoking and drinking to excesses--in the week he was gone i drowned myself in the sweet sweet poisons of addiction, for this i partly blame him for leaving me alone where he knows very well i am this mad flighty creature who MUST DO SOMETHING WITH HER HANDS EVERY WAKING MOMENT OR SHE WILL EXPLODE. so there was nothing to do but fidget in my seat like a restless kindergarden child; but mark was also mad at me because i kept talking about you. weng this. weng that. i don't think i could ever stop talking about you, i am not even sure why, hello i am damned, hello i don't think i could put you completely out of mind, hello neither of us has won. i know that i should have known better this would eventually happen, but i thought he trusted me like i trusted you. but this is where i realise that, indeed he has no reason to trust in me (i with attention span of shortlived kamikaze insects darting from lightbulb to lightbulb, i am beginning to fear myself already). i suppose no one besides you can be trusted. mark i wish you would understand, i wish you could trust me, you of all people should know how mad i am for you, i wish you wouldn't stand there so calmly, to watch me fumble in the dirt to find the road buried below the ground, where bones and skeletons claw for the surface trying to find something to hold on to in the loose dirt, these fly-by-night businesses they have to stop, my pockets are empty and i am beginning to see the bottom of the neverending glass.

they call it baggage because no one throws away their baggage.
they call it baggage because one takes it along while being on the move, and sometimes unpacks a thing or two, and clutches a familiar photo in a hand with white knuckles.

but i wouldn't change a thing. i will look fondly back on the past year, and i won't regret a thing that i do this year. eitherway it won't change a thing. i have never felt more in danger of losing my faculties, weng i have never missed you more, yet i have never wanted to be with mark more badly, never laughed harder or cried harder over the most ridiculous of things, i have never thirsted so much for a cold drink in my hand. we are approaching a toxic state; we live nownownow. so i desired the decadence of excess, now that i am awash in it, what am i complaining about? this is the way the story goes. buy me another drink and maybe i'll say more.

my pockets are empty and my hands are open

2005-01-01T03:56:40Z

the truth was that eugene dangled the bait and i bit it; lured by the possibility of seeing rensheng again, or to relive my fondness for alcohol (too much, too much), drinks over which there was the trading of knowing looks with rensheng while eugene visited the washroom at coccolatte--if it were an ocean i'd have been dragged out to sea by the undertow. silly boys. after we joined the others playing pool at cuppage, rens and i swapped punches in faux boxing matches, but he refused "to hit a girl", while i was suddenly dead intent on inflicting X-TREME DAMAGE HA! i want you to hit me as hard as you can. push me into brokendown fountains and bruise my shoulder. just give me a scar to remember you by. is that too much to ask for?

contemplating the large variety of fatal diseases that fit the bill of symptoms of "extreme lethargy", "general all-over aching", "depression", "confusion", "loss of appetite", etc; i could only surmise that i was probably coming down with something fatal like ammonia poisoning, kidney failure, or something grander--death! that would spell no more alcohol, no more cigarettes, no more of these colourful sights, no more masochism or choked words or delicious awkward silences or familiar self-loathing or people warm and close to me--just nothing! so i sat there sulking like a child punished to sit in a corner at playtime, feeling ridiculously wretched but simultaneously loathe to leave, never wanting to leave to die! never! surely not die! not to die at twenty! die in blank ignominy of namelessness, fateless, fettered by a sudden fear of a lifetime of having done nothing and a deathtime to do even more nothing, forgotten and eaten by the dust. edwin cracked a joke about rigor mortis which suddenly disturbed me greatly--for while sitting at a roadside prata shop along unfamiliar roads with cars parked in gravel, dirt caked all over the shop houses older than oneself, a television set humming over some random channel--it is entirely possible to forget your name. (a bountiful supply of alcohol can do that too). the human is reduced to a random living creature that rigor mortis claims at death, immortalizing old flesh in the pose your cold body adopts at the point of your extinction. an ambulance passed by. i sat there, suddenly rendered hopeless, unable to come to grips with the fact of my imminent mortality. how weak. how weak i am, with death scaring me to death.

let me tell you about rigor mortis. latin for "stiffness of death". after we die and the blood stops pumping through our veins, our muscles no longer get oxygen, but the cells do not die immediately, rather they continue to function anaerobically and produce lactic acid. in the absence of oxygen, this lactic acid cannot be converted back to atp (adenosine tri phosphate, the body's source of energy). the lack of atp disables the myosin heads from detaching from the actin, so the muscle remains contracted, until the muscle itself decays. this should be the kind of thing you read while listening to bruckner's mass in e minor otherwise it is SICKSICKSICK, you are plebeian meat on the slab, you are no better than anyone else. MISERE. there is no romance in this. me and my fucking notions of romance, all these will be erased without a moment's notice.

i am truly afraid. we are truly alone. you can hear me breathing but you will never see me feel. emotion. sensation. passion. these things we will never know for sure. we are so truly alone. do you know how scared i am?

AND YOU! ALL OF YOU!
YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE ON ME. YOU HEAR ME?
NO GOING TO AUSTRALIA AND DYING ACCIDENTALLY!

especially you. you you double you. i fear for you the most, for you always seem to be on the move. at a bookshop where little children had crowded to play with markers and pens, scrawling over papers for fun, i saw a line in red ink that said "i cause killer tidal waves". like 911 when i heard planes had crashed into buildings i thought the world had seen worse. when i heard water had inundated much of coastal asia and killed so many thousands it was nothing to me at all. although i had a brief panic thinking you might have snuck off to malaysia or thailand in the day or so which i hadn't heard from you; i was relieved to see you were fine. fuck the world, for we are wont to be selfish in our own idiosyncratic ways; it is only human.

coldglasslove @ 2004-12-27T16:31:00

2004-12-28T03:57:34Z

xmas. we had been watching Anna & The King in the basement, squirming at the appearance of local thespians trying to pass themselves off as Thais but HA we knew better. midway my thirst got the better of me, and the wine was lovely, although not terribly sweet or cold, but i had come with an satiable thirst, till everything was spinning. i do believe i felt like the conversation was almost inspirational, but that's not me speaking. i don't know why we even left the house, but i found my way to his house and safetypinned some blob i sewed to his bike; merry christmas i'm sorry my sewing is so terrible, i'm sorry this will be all inadequate; i found a handful of plastic flowers in my bag the next day, can anyone explain that? it must have been the travesty of seeing linkin park on MTV back at her house, i suffered a bizarre hiccuping fit for half an hour like a stereotypical drunkard--except that i never got around to drinking from the wrong side of the glass.

boxing day. as i was on the way to holland village to buy more bleach, i met a sweet malay lady named fazilah, who had just visited her sister at the hospital and she had gotten completely lost while looking for the train station, and i brought her to buona vista so she could get home. at holland village i picked up two childrens books from the sunday bazaar at holland village, one titled I DARE YOU! and the other WILL I EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH? these big fat books with faded colour photographs from the seventies, because i thought these were the qualities i admired most in children; the recklessness and aspirations too big for adults to keep.

the rattling of mirrors

2004-12-24T14:05:16Z

this is like a corridor through which my footsteps still echo through. empty and otherwise perfectly silent. i suppose i should kill myself, then these words would be like the touch of a ghost passing through. pale gossamer thin transparent and unseen. there is something beautiful about ephemerality, but i would have be shallow to think that in death i would ever put right what i failed to achieve in life. it solves nothing.

secrets bloom

2004-12-24T13:17:59Z

at any one point in time there are always images of other places superimposed over whatever scenery i'm looking at. it is almost always a place that i have been to, but today the image stuck in my head is that of a train station at night. the lights are orange and i'm standing on the tracks looking inwards. i'm probably wearing black and it is silent except the faint sound of insects; there must be grass nearby. perhaps there are empty bottles of liquor by the train, but i can't see very clearly, perhaps i have drunk them all. i can't quite recall when this image first came to mind either, but i have never taken a real train (MRTs do not count) before, in my whole life; nor have i ever seen that particular train station in print or on film before; perhaps it first came to me in a dream. in this recurrent vision, i am the passenger waiting for the train. in that space that divides those who remain and those who leave, in that short time that divides between a stationary state and being in motion. it leaves me with nothing, although to the casual observer i appear to have everything together--a packed bag, a ticket, and a destination written on it. there is nothing enviable about moving on, even if you were the one who decided on it first.

so i do know that my pain is not comparable to your pain (oh right, what pain do i have to speak of? hey i asked for it, didn't i? yeah, i have no right, isn't that the case?) but what i do know is that i still feel like crying. there this is my space, i will throw whatever tantrums i want. i want room service, i want the club sandwich, i want the cold Mexican beer. i want the smirnoff blue on tap, and i will fill my glass with the sweet water that will erase the clarity of these images. today, back home in the land of milk and honey, i realised that the hollow emptiness i had been feeling all these days was not truly that of hunger. despite having sated the hunger for once, the tendrils of cold fear stlll crept into my lungs, and i was forced to wear huge sweaters and socks all around the house to keep my fingers from freezing off.

the words always feel so inadequate. but i go quite mad when i hear no word at all, so i conduct little social experiments to see if my fears are founded. (i am sorry i am so needy) holding one's breath and keeping silent till someone else speaks first. i'm afraid this will be never. please prove me wrong.

xvii + iii

2004-12-24T12:16:46Z

dont leave me was all s/he could say
well forgive me was all s/he could reply that day

my atrocity exhibition

2004-12-23T17:55:49Z

in the mornings i drag myself into consciousness with a sick unsettling sensation of impermanence, from the moment one foot is out of the bed i fervently begin to wish i had the mettle to drive a nail through it and pin it down to the ground. despite this frequent complaint, in my waking hours i mostly still persist in clinging to freedom, with the desperation of a secret stowaway on a speeding truck holding on for dear life, blinded by the wind and sand in my eye and the mad illicit pleasure of utter carelessness. i walk by accidental roads, collect rubbish and junk from roadsides as if they were brilliant treasure, and prick my ears up to hear snatches of the conversations of passerbys as if they were god speaking to me directly. in all this there are already inherent contradictions: one, i want to be everywhere at once; two, i want to go nowhere, because to have a specific destination in mind would reduce the outcome to a binary--there or not there--and i will not abide with this. in short, i want to be forever. in short, i might as well say i want to be god.

now declare your NAME as null and void, for names identify things as belongings, when the truth is nothing belongs to anyone. this is a disposable culture. use and throw out. i should throw out old papers and delete files from hard drives with no mercy, but it has been harder than i thought it would be. remember, although you may be tempted, do not merit them with even a sideward glance--or the wicked weight of sentimentalism which these things are so awfully freighted with will come crashing down on your toes. not a pleasant or productive thing, unless you are fond of dancing on hot coals until you die from the exhaustion. but of course, some find that kind of self-destructiveness rapturous... even sexy? i hate that we are such contradictory creatures, but then they tell me this is the common affliction of youth, and that too, will pass.

this is a record for myself. i made this page because i wanted a quiet place for my head.