I recently discovered Haruki Murakami and he is nothing short of brilliance. He captures emotions like a woman (yes stereotyping) trapped in a man's body. I've a strong impulse to read all his books before school starts.
"I took my time, trying to find the right words. 'I always feel as if I'm struggling to become someone else. As if I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I suppose it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to re-invent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself-as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself. For your sake, I'd like to become a new person. It may not be easy, but if I give it my all, perhaps I can manage to change."
-South of the Border, West of the Sun
Two things I'm going to attempt to change in this new year ahead:
1) Not to be late.
2) To sleep early.
Two extremely daunting tasks, that's why they're called resolutions.
Work-in-Progress
[Hunting for a good quote]
Friday, December 26, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
"All I'm asking for"
Why are people always planning important things to do?
Because everyday is a rush against ticking hands, because we can never find enough time to do things that don’t make it up that list, because it frustrates me so, I’ve worked out my list of little self-indulgent things to do:
1. Visit Ikea to smell their Wood air, settle my food cravings, jostle with the Christmas crowd and be bowled over by their décor.
2. Sit in Starbucks for a whole afternoon reading a good book with a cup of Green Tea Frappuccino.
3. Watch some really heart-wrenching romance films like (under Meiling’s recommendation) “A Walk to Remember”, or other classics like “Forrest Gump”, “I am Sam” with Vinegar chips and girlfriends sobbing the night away.
4. Plus a few feel good movies to heal the soul. Perhaps “Mrs. Doubtfire”. Or “Love Actually”, which never bores me, no matter how many times I’ve watched it.
5. Find a new café/hangout area to visit, one for the day, one for the night. Somewhere rustic but not romanticized, quirky but not commercialized.
6. Cycle in East Coast Park on a midweek evening taking in the orange sky. Followed by a good sea-breezed dinner.
7. Go to the Sunday flea market where they lay mats and sell old junk/treasure. (Where’s that? Around Bugis/Farrer Park area? Does anyone know?)
8. Organize photos, develop album-worthy ones, and create something gorgeous. [ I know I’m not going to do it, just writing it down to feel accomplished, thinking about it sounds like too much hassle already: ) ]
9. Have a good conversation over good dessert (anything will do), a conversation so good it makes time irrelevant.
10. Roll down a hill, frolic on soft green carpeted grass, picnic with Sparkling Apple juice, big red Cherries, Ham ‘n’ Cheese sandwich toasted, wind in hair, sun on face.
11. Bake a humongous fantastically delicious cake to share with all my friends. I’m thinking of something spongy with lemon icing all over. [ Of course I need an equally fantastic friend to teach: ) ]
12. Fall asleep with drugged out fatigue, and immense satisfaction.
I guess I could come up with a thousand more items, but I feel so excited typing this, I can’t gather my thoughts now. Happy Holidays.
Because everyday is a rush against ticking hands, because we can never find enough time to do things that don’t make it up that list, because it frustrates me so, I’ve worked out my list of little self-indulgent things to do:
1. Visit Ikea to smell their Wood air, settle my food cravings, jostle with the Christmas crowd and be bowled over by their décor.
2. Sit in Starbucks for a whole afternoon reading a good book with a cup of Green Tea Frappuccino.
3. Watch some really heart-wrenching romance films like (under Meiling’s recommendation) “A Walk to Remember”, or other classics like “Forrest Gump”, “I am Sam” with Vinegar chips and girlfriends sobbing the night away.
4. Plus a few feel good movies to heal the soul. Perhaps “Mrs. Doubtfire”. Or “Love Actually”, which never bores me, no matter how many times I’ve watched it.
5. Find a new café/hangout area to visit, one for the day, one for the night. Somewhere rustic but not romanticized, quirky but not commercialized.
6. Cycle in East Coast Park on a midweek evening taking in the orange sky. Followed by a good sea-breezed dinner.
7. Go to the Sunday flea market where they lay mats and sell old junk/treasure. (Where’s that? Around Bugis/Farrer Park area? Does anyone know?)
8. Organize photos, develop album-worthy ones, and create something gorgeous. [ I know I’m not going to do it, just writing it down to feel accomplished, thinking about it sounds like too much hassle already: ) ]
9. Have a good conversation over good dessert (anything will do), a conversation so good it makes time irrelevant.
10. Roll down a hill, frolic on soft green carpeted grass, picnic with Sparkling Apple juice, big red Cherries, Ham ‘n’ Cheese sandwich toasted, wind in hair, sun on face.
11. Bake a humongous fantastically delicious cake to share with all my friends. I’m thinking of something spongy with lemon icing all over. [ Of course I need an equally fantastic friend to teach: ) ]
12. Fall asleep with drugged out fatigue, and immense satisfaction.
I guess I could come up with a thousand more items, but I feel so excited typing this, I can’t gather my thoughts now. Happy Holidays.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
The art of Happiness
I haven’t been writing--I have been ambivalent about most things, haven’t had a stand to make about anything, couldn’t find the time to read, couldn’t remember how to string coherent thoughts together, couldn’t decide on how to represent myself. When I read what I’ve written, it occurs to me that there is a disjuncture between this self that writes and the self that is being projected to the world, like a key that doesn’t fit into the keyhole. I guess that happens because reflexivity often springs fourth from more negative than positive situations. So the self that is transcribed onto paper is often more contemplative and distressed than the public self.
“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.
The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public...The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes...Then there is the third category, the category of who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love...And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present."
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera.
When I read that, I thought of Geertz’s “man as a symbolizing animal”, just as how I wrote the lines above to assure the world and myself that I am not strange/a weirdo/alienated from people.
Am I generalizing when I say that life is always a tension of sorts, that’s how it appears to me. It is not an issue of the grass being greener on the other side though, it is a matter of limits and extremes. I can never be wholly happy; I realized that in a moment today, I think I can never be. I was in the cinema this evening, watching a show, laughing and enjoying myself. During that one single transitory moment when I reached an extreme point of elation, a wave of fear washed over me. The day flashed by: dazzling lights, Christmas crowd, December cool wind air, shopping centres’ smell, and I am made to feel a strange sense of fear for being so happy. Then it struck me that this feeling is familiar, I am not new to it, and in the darkness of the cinema, I realized that these same emotions are replicated on airplane flights back home. When I am watching one of those in-flight screenings, the whole vacation plays out in my mind in seconds. And I feel that I am on cloud nine literally and figuratively, but that is immediately replaced by a combination of unfounded fear and insecurity.
I’ve always felt this way, but only today am I aware that I’ve always felt this way. I realized this fear is a response to transitory happiness, a fear of losing it when all is over, when the plane lands, when the show’s over, when the curtains are drawn and the actors do a curtsey.
“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.
The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public...The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes...Then there is the third category, the category of who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love...And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present."
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera.
When I read that, I thought of Geertz’s “man as a symbolizing animal”, just as how I wrote the lines above to assure the world and myself that I am not strange/a weirdo/alienated from people.
Am I generalizing when I say that life is always a tension of sorts, that’s how it appears to me. It is not an issue of the grass being greener on the other side though, it is a matter of limits and extremes. I can never be wholly happy; I realized that in a moment today, I think I can never be. I was in the cinema this evening, watching a show, laughing and enjoying myself. During that one single transitory moment when I reached an extreme point of elation, a wave of fear washed over me. The day flashed by: dazzling lights, Christmas crowd, December cool wind air, shopping centres’ smell, and I am made to feel a strange sense of fear for being so happy. Then it struck me that this feeling is familiar, I am not new to it, and in the darkness of the cinema, I realized that these same emotions are replicated on airplane flights back home. When I am watching one of those in-flight screenings, the whole vacation plays out in my mind in seconds. And I feel that I am on cloud nine literally and figuratively, but that is immediately replaced by a combination of unfounded fear and insecurity.
I’ve always felt this way, but only today am I aware that I’ve always felt this way. I realized this fear is a response to transitory happiness, a fear of losing it when all is over, when the plane lands, when the show’s over, when the curtains are drawn and the actors do a curtsey.
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