the heart does stupid things.
it beats; it beats itself up, throws itself against its ribbed cage in futile protest let me out let me in let me let me. it beats in tandem with another's with or without invitation, skips a beat at a chance-caught glance, leaps at a word, sinks at a thought, thrills at a voice to beat faster-faster still.
it aches; it aches, knowing there are things it will never see come to fruition, hopeless dreams it will never fulfill, other hearts which will never choose to play "come live with me and be my insert-suitable-noun-here", which will laugh in derision or scorn or shy away in sheer disgust at unasked-for affections.
it breaks; it shatters into pieces between one breath and the next, shards that will cut here-- and here-- and here. shards that cut her name into your mind, trace his initials across your arm, brand their names across your formless days and unsleeping nights.
the heart, my friends, is weak.
i laughed in outright incredulity at what someone was doing-- the depths of delusion to which a person could sink-- but caught myself within seconds. who am i to laugh, to mock another's heart, however deceived it is? how many of us haven't leapt to the same conclusions at the drop of a hat, or so much as a sneeze in the wrong direction? granted we don't all deceive ourselves so fully, nor do we all persist in our delusions for so long, nor do we go to quite the same extents...
it is amazing-- amazing, and terrible-- what we would have ourselves believe. and i cannot laugh, because what separates me from him, you from her, us from them, but a fine, fine line? when does affection grow to obsession, innocuous thinking thereof to unhealthy stalking?
sometimes there can be so much more to be found when you decide to release what you think is meant to be yours. sometimes you need to learn, as i did, as all of us will and maybe do:
there is. no us.
there never was.
there never will be.
there never was.
there never will be.
the heart is weak, yes, but it can be built to be strong. sometimes you need to let go and place the first brick.
_____________________________________________________________
that was inspired by napoleon the tin can, but directed at the-- er-- at what's been making napoleon's brown eyes blue. hurhur. i'm sorry napoleon won't be blogging anymore :(
the picture was from tania de rozario's installation art piece at the esplanade walkway (see below!). nette did not get the picture from my last post. anyway it's "cereal killer". hur. a sign that we all need to stop eating so much cereal.
saturday started out unbearably early for the alumni brunch thingy-- who gets up for brunch at 6 am?! okay technically i woke up at 7.40, but still. hurhur. anyway it was okay-- not a roaring success, but at least like all the guests didn't languish in stony-walled silence or something. eurgh. i am not good at small talk and it did not help that i was horribly afraid of making a faux pas and damning my career for the next three decades or something. but if i wasn't good at small talk then surely the judges and all our guests were, because the flow of conversation didn't really stop.
after that there was debriefing, where all the drama and politics and pent-up toxicity of our little group came pouring out. at any rate it was a good detox session i think i can safely say that it really cleared the air. i hope nobody went away bitter... and i must say that i now have a bit more faith that the year 1s will be able to deal with slr. we won't have to all abandon ship and drink wine at dempsey after all. hurhur.
after that-- on a quest for my city hall poem (camera all charged and raring to go in my bag heh)-- krys went along with me to hunt for tania de rozario's a hundred ways to say your name. i'd first read the poem on my sister's blog-- or rather listened as she read it aloud from a picture she had taken (yes we are occasionally literary, considering both my sisters and i have taken literature. i cannot say the same for my brother, with whom my only source of communication is GET OFF LEFT FOR DEAD SO I CAN WATCH SPONGEBOB or, in a better mood, "do you want to buy guitar hero?").
for a moment her words-- the poet's, not my sister's-- touched something in me, and overcame my usual cynical weltanschauung-- enough that, instead of making a quip as i usually did/do, i said, simply, "that is awesome". (yes, xuzi, awesome is an awesome word. hurhur)
words, like the slow unveiling of light.
so ever since then i've been looking for a chance to go down and see the installation. i have to admit, it wasn't everything i'd expected, after listening to my sister's description-- i expected a cosier setting, with a wood-panelled room perhaps clothes-strewn with the debris of life and days and time, with the ubiquitous typewriter ready and waiting, like that chinese poem or proverb or song-- a cup of tea still steaming on the table, but no one to return to it.
the exhibition was a little bit more sterile. might have been the starkness, the endless white, the glare of the lights. might have been the fading of the glow from my expectation-suffused eyes. nevertheless...
before you.
the piece de resistance
i really, really like lined paper.
the power of words.
in any case saturday was good. lunch with krys at billy bombers, where amidst girl talk she watched aghast as i repeatedly employed laminar displacement upon the hapless bottle of ketchup ("wow. you REALLY eat a lot of ketchup") to turn my "chunky fries" into "fries ON tomato ketchup". frankly if she hadn't said that i think i would have finished the bottle. :(
met my mum and dad for a futile hunt for shoes and then adjourned home, where i laughed out loud upon seeing my brother's morose face peering out at the streetlamps from the darkened cavern of my house.
yea, earth hour. and with my nazi of an environment-champion-sister, did anyone expect a single light to survive the onslaught? i felt nose-thumbingly superior to all the other houses with lights blazing-- esp after i saw that my neighbour's lights were still on (i don't like that particular neighbour. SUXXORS.). man i deserve to be punched.
of course my mum promptly ruined ALL possible scraps of environmentalism by going on a mad hunt for candles. i believe she lit about twenty three of them in ten seconds and would have lit more if she could have crammed the long but not-so-skinny tapers into too-skinny candelabras. why the heck do we even have a candelabra in the house??? are we secretly jewish???
trigger-- i mean, candle-happy-- mum.
she got a bit miffed when my dad-- rather astutely, i thought-- reminded her of the time they had to break out the fire extinguisher after one of her let's-hum-in-cosmic-harmony moments. the upside of having an erstwhile-firefighter-dad (the downside is having to endure "you too can prevent forest fires"-esque speeches about, oh, once every two hours).
anyway wonderful candlelit dinner. i have not sat down and eaten with my family in too, too long (although my dad went out to gym instead. GRUMBLE).
worth missing a JJ concert for... almost. reurgh.
moral of the day: listen carefully before you smile and nod.
customer: "wow. the guy before me bought 300 bucks worth of stuff, huh."
moronic sister: *smiles* "ah, yes, yes." *continues to pack purchases."
customer: "what a faggot."
moronic sister: "ah, yes yes."
customer leaves. moronic sister's brain finally processes, and she turns to stunned-looking colleague: "DID HE SAY FAGGOT??"
_____________________________________________________________
that was inspired by napoleon the tin can, but directed at the-- er-- at what's been making napoleon's brown eyes blue. hurhur. i'm sorry napoleon won't be blogging anymore :(
the picture was from tania de rozario's installation art piece at the esplanade walkway (see below!). nette did not get the picture from my last post. anyway it's "cereal killer". hur. a sign that we all need to stop eating so much cereal.
saturday started out unbearably early for the alumni brunch thingy-- who gets up for brunch at 6 am?! okay technically i woke up at 7.40, but still. hurhur. anyway it was okay-- not a roaring success, but at least like all the guests didn't languish in stony-walled silence or something. eurgh. i am not good at small talk and it did not help that i was horribly afraid of making a faux pas and damning my career for the next three decades or something. but if i wasn't good at small talk then surely the judges and all our guests were, because the flow of conversation didn't really stop.
after that there was debriefing, where all the drama and politics and pent-up toxicity of our little group came pouring out. at any rate it was a good detox session i think i can safely say that it really cleared the air. i hope nobody went away bitter... and i must say that i now have a bit more faith that the year 1s will be able to deal with slr. we won't have to all abandon ship and drink wine at dempsey after all. hurhur.
after that-- on a quest for my city hall poem (camera all charged and raring to go in my bag heh)-- krys went along with me to hunt for tania de rozario's a hundred ways to say your name. i'd first read the poem on my sister's blog-- or rather listened as she read it aloud from a picture she had taken (yes we are occasionally literary, considering both my sisters and i have taken literature. i cannot say the same for my brother, with whom my only source of communication is GET OFF LEFT FOR DEAD SO I CAN WATCH SPONGEBOB or, in a better mood, "do you want to buy guitar hero?").
for a moment her words-- the poet's, not my sister's-- touched something in me, and overcame my usual cynical weltanschauung-- enough that, instead of making a quip as i usually did/do, i said, simply, "that is awesome". (yes, xuzi, awesome is an awesome word. hurhur)
words, like the slow unveiling of light.
so ever since then i've been looking for a chance to go down and see the installation. i have to admit, it wasn't everything i'd expected, after listening to my sister's description-- i expected a cosier setting, with a wood-panelled room perhaps clothes-strewn with the debris of life and days and time, with the ubiquitous typewriter ready and waiting, like that chinese poem or proverb or song-- a cup of tea still steaming on the table, but no one to return to it.
the exhibition was a little bit more sterile. might have been the starkness, the endless white, the glare of the lights. might have been the fading of the glow from my expectation-suffused eyes. nevertheless...
before you.
the piece de resistancei really, really like lined paper.
the power of words.
in any case saturday was good. lunch with krys at billy bombers, where amidst girl talk she watched aghast as i repeatedly employed laminar displacement upon the hapless bottle of ketchup ("wow. you REALLY eat a lot of ketchup") to turn my "chunky fries" into "fries ON tomato ketchup". frankly if she hadn't said that i think i would have finished the bottle. :(
met my mum and dad for a futile hunt for shoes and then adjourned home, where i laughed out loud upon seeing my brother's morose face peering out at the streetlamps from the darkened cavern of my house.
yea, earth hour. and with my nazi of an environment-champion-sister, did anyone expect a single light to survive the onslaught? i felt nose-thumbingly superior to all the other houses with lights blazing-- esp after i saw that my neighbour's lights were still on (i don't like that particular neighbour. SUXXORS.). man i deserve to be punched.
of course my mum promptly ruined ALL possible scraps of environmentalism by going on a mad hunt for candles. i believe she lit about twenty three of them in ten seconds and would have lit more if she could have crammed the long but not-so-skinny tapers into too-skinny candelabras. why the heck do we even have a candelabra in the house??? are we secretly jewish???
trigger-- i mean, candle-happy-- mum.she got a bit miffed when my dad-- rather astutely, i thought-- reminded her of the time they had to break out the fire extinguisher after one of her let's-hum-in-cosmic-harmony moments. the upside of having an erstwhile-firefighter-dad (the downside is having to endure "you too can prevent forest fires"-esque speeches about, oh, once every two hours).
anyway wonderful candlelit dinner. i have not sat down and eaten with my family in too, too long (although my dad went out to gym instead. GRUMBLE).
worth missing a JJ concert for... almost. reurgh.
moral of the day: listen carefully before you smile and nod.
customer: "wow. the guy before me bought 300 bucks worth of stuff, huh."
moronic sister: *smiles* "ah, yes, yes." *continues to pack purchases."
customer: "what a faggot."
moronic sister: "ah, yes yes."
customer leaves. moronic sister's brain finally processes, and she turns to stunned-looking colleague: "DID HE SAY FAGGOT??"