The Power of Words

In the thick of data analysis, here's what one of my respondents said when asked about his life in the halfway house:

"We wake at 630, then 7 we do our own bible study. Then breakfast and then have chapel for worship. Then we do our own duties until 430. And at 430, we'll exercise. Then 730, bible study again, then sleep or do our own things."

In trudging along, I don't think our lives are entirely far flung or different. There's rest to the bones, waking to new mornings, and a whole lot (or lack of ) activity in between.

I remember some time last year I championed for a Sociology of So What? So what do we make of all these knowledge? So what do we make of being anti-establishments when we end up cogs in the machine? So what do I make of his life, summarized into 10 pages of transcript of Times New Roman Font12?

I guess the least I could do is to write something that could effect some change.

Who would have thought-

My moment of epiphany today came when I took a deep breadth of wednesday-afternoon-rain air and realised that God has such a funny way of working in our lives.

Who would have thought-

Never would I have imagined that-

So all that happened so that I would learn to.......

This is such a Westlife-Flying-Without-Wings afternoon- the rain, the gloom, the thesis. My impending graduation has left me nostalgic, not over the school/institution but over the passage of time over the last four years. The things that happened, those that almost did, those that never did, the things I avoided, those I ran away from, altogether they make me feel older and somewhat less energetic. In other news, I am actually looking forward to working (never thought I'd feel this way because I have always loved, and still do, what I study), to a lifestyle change.

But first, I need a strong dose of the arts after I'm done with my thesis to make up for the drought in the past three months.

"they will run and not grow weary"

I know I am getting worried when I start copying down every quote and verse that I see onto Post-Its and crowd my calendar with them.I guess there is something in the act of writing it down that makes me believe that whatever is said will come true for me.

"When tough times arrive, you should work as if everything depended on you and pray as if everything depended on God, peace and grace."

I wish I could spew such words of wisdom like A. R. Bernard.

My Inversed Bio Clock

Writing has taken a hiatus with the impending thesis deadline looming ahead. In the depths of the night, Lady Gaga keeps me up. She is so bizarre. At twenty-three, she performs for millions. At twenty-three, I revolutionise the world with my earth-breaking thesis that three people (supervisor + 2 examiners) are going to read.

Well, we all start somewhere huh...

Obama is The Man!

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.
-Barack Obama

the passing of time

I think it is fascinating how we're always channeling our energy and emotions on different people/subjects/objects with the only constant being the perpetual search for an outlet for this energy release.

Onto another phase in life.

Reading testimonies is always such joy, surprise and occasionally joke. Teachers have a fantastic way of making people sound so terribly good on print (imagine "the Horror, the Horror" in real life). Finally gotten down to taking one of those mug shot passport photos, digging up result slips so that I can spam companies!
"Zhi Qi has the energy, empathy and enthusiasm to touch the people around her."

I love how the world can be so kind.

Best Time of the Day

Be ready in the morning, and then come up.... Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. No one is to come with you.

Exodus 34:2-3

Ugh

Thesis writing is a long lonely never-ending winding road that leads into a dark forest that is completely pitch black with a million entangling vines on the ground.

New Soul (Indeed!)

It takes a bad case of flu to break the routine of Chinese New Year. This year, I traded the usual visiting for sleep. I’ve been having plain porridge for the past 5 days, been drinking all sorts of herbal tea, and finally went to the doctors first thing in the morning today. I finally feel good enough to sit up. It is such a beautiful Wednesday and that brought tremendous cheer. I had porridge again for breakfast but it was nice having it outside: sitting in a coffeeshop, enjoying the morning breeze, watching old people drink Kopi and realizing what an ageing population we have. There’s a quiet peaceful beauty in people-watching that shouldn’t be trivialized. I love listening to conversations from the neighbouring table (stocks to buy, jobs their children have gotten, places that sell good kopi, how expensive everything is getting), the outfits people have (pirated Armani blouse with love handles spilling out, Army singlets, white round-necked tees, freshly permed hair). It is always amusing watching Society unfold right in front of my very own eyes.


The only conversations I’ve had this new year centre around my sickness (a twisted irony—yet another routine of: (i) Why are you ill?, (ii) Have you been very busy? (iii) Why haven’t you been to the doctors?) Also these few nights, I fell asleep praying because my incessant coughs keep me from sleeping and between counting the seconds in the intervals of my coughs, I prayed that God would give me sweet uninterrupted rest.

During these days of rest, it hit me that being ill over CNY is exactly like people watching (minus the perpetual cough, the sore throat, the mucus, the muscle aches). Having lost my voice, all I can do is sit and watch my relatives eat, listen to their conversations, watch their hands gesturing around, like someone has videotaped these scenes, muted them and I'm now watching tape after tape. These observations from the sidelines made me realized that we’ve all grown up. Almost all the cousins have moved on from studying to working, my nephew is ten this year, we’re all moving somewhere.

Anyhows, I feel mighty being able to smell the air: the waft of my neighbour’s cooking, the breeze that carries the crisp of leaves baked by the noon sun. After living the past few days in a trance and looking like a bad disaster (No visitations translates to not wearing any of the new clothes I bought over and above my ghostly complexion and pale lips), I am so awfully happy that I finally feel alive, being able to stay awake without slipping into naps every two hours. It’s such a great empowering feeling.

I feel like I need to get down to doing everything that I missed out on, which is ironically (life is full of ironies) the reason why I fell so ill. I pack my days with activities down to the very minute and I quite like it that way. But I've learnt my lesson this time round--I will take good care of my body admist a filled but slower-paced (should be workable somehow) life.

Past Midnight

The times when I seek comfort from the softness of the pillow, the times when all that I feel are the creases on the bedspread, the times when I choose to shut my eyes because it is an easier option than staying awake are  the times which are not palatable to the world of glamour and perfection. Those that are welcome on the buffet spread of emotions are the confident grins, unwavering smiles and shiny eyes. But still, there are times when the greatest comfort comes in the form of the aged old familarity of the smell of the bedspread and knowing that tomorrow will come, but tonight will give me enough rest for tomorrow.  

I love Boey Kim Cheng's Past Midnight

I turn the light on to see if I am still there.
The bulb creeps to life, resentful
at being roused to work. The dreary repertoire
which a discordant band went through a dozen times
during a neighbour's funeral are marching
in my head. I hum a classical tune, summon
the words of a sentimenal song
to expel the stubborn band. The blaring trumpets
cut them with a single blow.

Life is a perpetual unrest
in the housing estates. The endless knockings,
the stempeding feet, the hurricanes of bad temper,
the eternal television, the thrashing bodies,
the endless rituals of life and death.
Where is the point of stillness
art directs us to?
My mind veers crazily.
I turn the light off.
The bulb goes on burning inside.

before I Shut my eyes

I’ve been talking to ex-convicts day in day out, been listening to recordings night in night out, been detecting trends and patterns sometime here and sometime there. It is surprising how exhausted I feel after each session. An hour per person and I feel entirely drained, like the essence of life is being sucked out of me. I sat in Starbucks today, sinking into the couch, sipping Honey Orange Mocha, staring into space, watching people pass, gazing at the sky. All I register are colours, movements, shapes, nothing defined and concrete. It’s as if I were sitting inside a vacuum watching some form of life played out on a plasma screen with a glass panel separating the screen and my being. In my business these days, I feel more at ease and at peace though. I guess it comes with being clear about what I want, what I don’t, and ultimately forming more meaningful relationships with people who matter.

I'M ALIVE

Deadlines make me work hard and I'm happy when I'm busy. Sociology is beautiful!

Beyond a Distant Star

Words are very important to me and it’s a powerful medium that reaches to the core of my soul. My interest and fascination in poetry began when I discovered that poems are open to interpretation and can be read in as many ways as one chooses to read it. I like the ambiguity because nobody knows exactly what I’m thinking or how I’m feeling. Tonight, I’m not interested in writing poetry or fictitious letters. I guess my writing acts as an open declaration so that I would be hard on myself to stick to the decisions I’ve made. Tonight marks a closed chapter and the finality of the night is accentuated because it ended where things first began. The disbelief and pain came two years late, but it feels as raw as an open wound. This sudden turn of events once again reminds me that I’m as fragile as anyone else though I choose to believe that I’m special: calm, collected, and wise, unlike the run-of-the-mill girl. But this slap-in-the-face realization is also a discovery that whatever was shared was real and sweet, which makes memories doubly painful.

Somehow I draw people to share their pain with me and I easily dispense advice to them. I listen, empathize and advise. It is almost second nature. But when it’s my turn to be thrown off boat, my faith is clouded by doubts. There are so many times when Paul has scooped me up before I fall further. I remember every single call he gave because there aren’t many and he only appears to call during my crisis moments: that afternoon when I was plagued by stress in school, the morning I laid in bed when I was severely ill, the night before my exams, and tonight at midnight. I am always amazed by his discernment and timely calls in which I don’t say much. I listen, nod and occasionally murmur a ‘Yes’ to indicate that I’m still on the line. But somewhere in that unspoken silence, there is a quiet understanding.

When we hung up, I thought about my interviews with the ex-convicts and it doesn’t trivialize the issues I deal with but it makes me feel that there life is bountiful. I can’t remember much of the long conversation with Paul except this line he said, “You pray, believe and things will be alright”. Tomorrow I wake to a brand new day and a fresh new start. Though I know that it is a closed chapter, I am left with the most beautiful and irreplaceable memories of those two and a half years and there is no better way for a closure.

It's a Foucauldian Red Dot

"One must understand human nature. I have always thought that humanity was animal-like. The Confucian theory was man could be improved, but I'm not sure he can be. He can be trained, he can be disciplined."

-MM Lee

"Out of the night that covers me"

Invictus
by William Ernest Henley





Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.



It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
-------

There are too many things we can do with our life which makes choosing rightly so important. Just that, sometimes... it's a fine line between right and wrong.

Itsy Bitsy Spider Climbing Up the Wall

Hi all,

Thanks for any form of support you've rendered towards my "Letter Templates" project. From telling me that it's an awesome idea to telling me that you'd buy my book if I published, thank you! Your kind words have been very encouraging.

Recently, I discovered this Aussie writer: David Thorne who has a similar idea, just that his correspondences were for real! I cracked up reading all of them! Check out his site at 27bslash6 and have a good laugh. : )

http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html
Here's one on an overdue payment which he eventually published in a book called, "the internet is a playground".

Another funny one:

http://www.27bslash6.com/cups.html

Letter Template on "Recoveries"

Dear Bed Sheet,



To your question on my inversed biological clock, I admit that I’m afraid to turn the lights off to go to bed. I’m more afraid that in the darkness I would not be sleeping but would instead be trying hard to fall asleep. With the lamp turned on and the music playing, I have companionship. I can pick up the papers or a book anytime to distract myself. My days feel as though I’m on a horse and all I want to do is to continue galloping with my horse through the fields in such a speed that every colour becomes a white. I need a tight reign on myself so that I wouldn’t slip off the horse because I wouldn’t know where I would fall.

I flick the table lamp off only when I am completely worn out, when the horse reaches a point where she can no longer move an inch. Only then in my drugged out fatigue can I climb to bed. When I wake the following morning, I immediately continue my horse riding adventures so that thinking becomes impossible with everything flashing by. Eventually, I would return some time to myself and that is when I can go to bed earlier with the lights switched off. Then, I’d be able to confront everything with a smile and have a good night’s rest.


Love,
Owner

Reminders I need in Life

-Pst Phil Pringle

Gosh...

This guy has such STRANGE expressions....



A lil' freaky but his good voice redeems him! Talented people (writers, musicians, politicians, artists) are always either incredibly weird or extremely depressed and they somehow die young... Someone please tell me I'm mistaken.

Letter Template on "Changes"

Dear Ched,

When you said you saw a light from my window and wanted to give me a ring, I chocked on my tears. It was a little melodramatic. I felt as though I was acting out a scene in a movie with my sudden surge of emotions. The only difference is that I wasn't acting and it was reality for me.

 When I look out of my window, I’m sometimes reminded of your distant outline in the night street light and the immense comfort it gave me. There is still the dim orange glow from the street lamp and the shadows of leaves dancing around in the night wind. Someday when I move away, I’d gradually get acquainted with a new window view. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget this particular view.

Love,
Jayne

Letter Template on "Starting It Right"

Dear Georgia,


I know your name because I saw it on your tag when you came over to take my order for a Strawberry Margarita. You asked if I would like it “Frozen?” and I kept silent. I paused because for those few seconds, it seemed as if you were describing my current state of mind. “Yes, frozen please” came my reply. I drank and I felt so cold in that dark space with people dancing and screaming, “Happy New Year!”

My fingers were like icicles set upon the steering wheel as I was driving home. Then, I saw the moon. It was the roundest that I’ve ever seen and it was so bright. Its brightness set against the black sky made the shadows within well defined. I’ve not made any New Year resolutions but something in the brightness of the moon made me decide that I was going to start my year right.

Love,
Matthew

The Magic Thread

"Too often, people want what they want (or what they think they want, which is usually happiness in one form or another) right now. The irony of their impatience is that only by learning to wait, and by a willingness to accept the bad with the good, do we usually attain those things that are truly worthwhile."            -William J. Bennett

Stars