Nothing is old, nothing is new.

In the midst of all this rubbish, it is easy to forget that you are 22. That you are no longer in an institution that requires you to wear a uniform, with matching shoe laces.

It is easy to forget that at 22, unlike when you were 12, people can no longer be expected to be consistent the way you would like them to be. That relationships are not things you can secure with a good joke and a handful of candy. Or even a shoulder to cry on. That people will do what they want, that friendship is not an equitably reciprocal affair.

It is easy to forget that tears and heartache no longer hold the same value they used to. That the world now functions on a different currency, one that 12 year olds are incapable of comprehending. That’s what growing up is all about.

At 22, the only way to move is forward. It is easy to forget that the world has no patience or space for you to dwell in the hackneyed nothings of yesterday. That to be constant is now a folly rather than a virtue.

When there are no more words left to say and no more tears left to shed, one needs to keep walking. This might be hard, without a destination in sight. But still, keep walking, because it is what needs to be done and because it is the only thing left to do. Keep walking until one day, somewhere, you forget why you started walking in the first place.

And maybe, just maybe, you will find yourself at the beginning again.

<>Sometimes the most brutal cut is also the most necessary.

ADDENDUM @ 2.30pm (because I don’t have twitter and cos this is my blog)

Okay, time to grow up!

都是些露水情缘，世上哪儿来那么多一生一世？

There will be 2 parts to this entry, the first part pertaining to the bit about Bangkok, and how it all came about and the implications, and the second part about life apart from Bangkok thing. I can’t really be vocal about my elation wrt BKK on Facebook, not because I’m going to piss people off, but because it just doesn’t seem right to articulate your joy when it is at least partially premised on some other people’s unhappiness - some people ought to pick this up, but that’s a different story for a different time.

Above and beyond the ranking shocker, and the fact that I MADE IT (not just made it, but touched a few raw nerves along the way, baby!), is just the kind of self-validation that I’ve needed for the longest fucking time ever. Let’s not even go into the bigger picture self worth issues that I’ve had since last semester, cos that’s just a whole (very very big) different can of worms altogether.

But it was awesome to have W come up to me out of nowhere after one round to tell me, “That was a good speech, you have improved a lot, we are very proud of you.” In the smaller scheme of things, i.e. debate, it’s just so great when you get the recognition from someone you really look up to (and tbh, when we’re talking about debate, the last time I got recognition of any sort was probably in secondary school). And the best part is, you don’t even realise it until they tell you, and you’re like, “Really? Well, hey, I really must have been doing something right then, committing so many late nights to this thing.” I’m not saying that we should only do things when we perform well, but obviously people are going to have a certain threshold as to how much is enough, and when they are going to need to see some returns in the investment they have made, and YES, so now can go Bangkok.

Which brings me on to my second point. I think what’s really significant about this is that I now have the affirmation I need to really commit myself to all these things, knowing that it will, at some point of time, be worth it. I can now really tell myself that it feels right (not necessarily good, but right, at the very least) to commit myself to the gazillion things I have done to nix out any possibility that I might have any residual energy or time left to be concerned with or to get thoroughly upset with anything else. I don’t mean to say that things don’t affect me anymore, but there is something very empowering with being able, after the shitty initial 2 minutes of “Why is this happening again?”, to say, “You know what? Screw you, I’m going to try to be happier than any of you can ever aspire to be, and my happiness doesn’t have to be contingent on yours.”

Happiness shouldn’t have to be a competition, but in many cases, it is. Emotions do not operate in a vacuum. As human beings, we are not equipped with the apparatus to truly dichotomise reason from emotion, to consider happiness as an absolute concept as opposed to a relative one. I now know why the world is such a fucked up place, with such fucked up people. Because everybody is competing to be happier than everyone else. And while I thought I could be above this rat race, I realise that I can’t, really.

But at least I’m going to do my darnedest best to be happy in my own way rather than to undermine your happiness. I can think about six hundred and fifty-nine ways to cut you up in ways so deep you’d go into instant rapture, but I will not. And I think that makes me a better person. Than you, at the very least.

As above. Reflections pending.

When there is no one else you can turn to (except for you Cia Ai! we go eat nice things soon!), there’s always cup noodles.

And pineapple tarts.

All I want for my birthday is for things to go back to the way they used to be.

Or not.

So you see, today I had my first lit tutorial (and this is where I shall digress a bit, in very Woolf-esque fashion, except with a bit more self-awareness; was very funny today in class cos my tutor - male - is about As Gay As They Get, and I suspect half my class is lesbian, of the stoic, tanned, short-mildly-bleached hair, t-shirt/berms variety; please just imagine the visual juxtaposition, it is very funny), and we did some poetry. We didn’t really have a whole lot of time, so we just discussed one poem. I shall post it here, because I know some lit buffs read this thing:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

- One Art, Elizabeth Bishop

So yes (I really like this poem, by the way). One Art. We had all of 10 minutes to talk about it because our tutor needed to do the admin stuff (digression again - shit la if I don’t get A for this mod I will be damn dulan etc; tutor seems like very funny guy - Jo, he is the one I mentioned to you the other time), and so, the only people commenting on the poem were really myself and this other guy who is so completely forgettable that I didn’t actually give a shit whether he was gay or not (but! nevertheless! perfectly nice person, I am sure! Because apparently these days you cannot be honest about people without it coming to bite you at some point of time).

Okay, so long story short, I said my piece and my tutor was like, “Okay, but why are you so clinical in your approach!”

To which I now disclaim I take zero offence to. I concur, I was being extremely clinical about the way I had approached the poem. Style, patterns, transitions, nuances in argument. Yes.

But I am not clinical! I am not a clinical person! And so it really frustrates me! Because, thanks to my tutor’s very incisive observation (and no, I’m not being ironic here), I realise, that yes, I have somehow become extremely clinical in the manner I articulate myself, and somewhere, somehow, I have forgotten what it means to really say precisely how I feel, as it is.

And really, this sheds like 231212398% more clarity on how difficult it was for me to approach my first play (the ghost one) because the things I’d wanted to write about, are things about deep, deep feelings and angst and melancholy and pain etc, which are precisely the things that are not supposed to be written about clinically. And as it is, look at how structured and organised this paragraph has been! I hate it! And - yes, this is where I’m actually gonna try to be ironic - I think it is horrible how in striving for precision in language over the past n number of years, I have somehow lost the ability to articulate myself with the clarity I would like to!

So anyway, ya la, rant finish. Slightly more light-hearted tidbit. Quotable quote from today’s class - “I have been called many things all my life (he has a somewhat non-conventional English name, prone to mispronunciation), and I remember in NS I had this very post-modern moment… that the self is so multi-farious, and the name…” - the quote ends here because I was too busy chuckling to myself and rushing to text T about this to catch the rest of his sentence. But you get the idea.

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

- Happiness / Raymond Carver

I’m tutoring this girl in lit and I am only slightly abashed to say that I see it as an affirmation of my Good Taste in literature when teachers choose to use poems that I like for school assignments (c.f. Coming; Larkin)

I have a lot of things to do. Which means lists! I like lists. Lists make me happy. So here’s a list! Of things I have to do!

1. Short play (by Wed; aka Save Me From My Spineless Writing!!!)
2. Essay on Art (ditto)
3. 02 x (close) readings
4. Paper 1 pre-write
5. 4 chapters of Japanese linguistics to chew, digest and fucking internalise (by Thurs)
6. Read, for sake of tutees, the following:
6.1. The Merchant of Venice
6.2. Hamlet
6.3. Wuthering Heights (read before la, but, you know)
6.4. The Importance of Being Earnest
6.5. The Revenger’s Tragedy (WHAT IS THIS?!?!)
6.6. John Donne’s poetry
7. (and this is where I go into the more long term, big picture-ish things) FINISH WRITING -THE- PLAY
8. Db8 things

Sounds like a very extensive list hor? In truth I will probably really only accomplish about half (maybe less) of the list. Must still find time to eat junk food, take tiny naps, wank off etc. What.

This is for CSCX.

“The notion of the home as a base from which to start and to which we return sets up a dialectic process between ‘the home’ and ‘the away.’ They are truly interdependent. The profane and unfamiliar world may be threatening, but in the tension between it and the center lies the excitement and adventure of life. All new experience is found at the interface between the two. To live fully, we must both venture out and return. To exist without order is to be homeless, yet to remain at home is to be imprisoned.”

- HOME: An Ordering Principle in SPACE, Kim Dovey

This is mostly for myself.

“僕は三回か四回そんな風に女の子と寝たあとで、永沢さんに質問してみた。こんなことを七十回もつづけていて空しくならないのか、と。

「お前がこういうのを空しいと感じるなら、それはお前がまともな人間である証拠だし、それは喜ばしいことだ」と彼は言った。「知らない女と寝てまわって得るものなんて何もない。疲れて、自分が嫌になるだけだ。そりゃ俺だって同じだよ」

「じゃあどうしてあんなに一生懸命やるんですか？」

「それを説明するのはむずかしいな。ほら、ドストエフスキーが賭博について書いたものがあったろう？あれと同じだよ。つまりさ、可能性がまわりに充ちているときに、それをやり過ごして通りすぎるというのは大変にむずかしいことなんだ。それ、わかるか？」

「なんとなく」と僕は言った。

「日が暮れる、女の子が町に出てきてそのへんをうろうろして酒を飲んだりしている。彼女たちは何かを求めていて、俺はその何かを彼女たちに与えることができるんだ。それは本当に簡単なことなんだよ。水道の蛇口をひねって水を飲むのと同じくらい簡単なことなんだ。そんなのアっという間に落とせるし、向うだってそれを待ってるのさ。それが可能性というものだよ。そういう可能性が目の前に転がっていて、それをみすみすやりすごせるか？自分に能力があって、その能力を発揮できる場があって、お前は黙って通り過ぎるかい？」

「そういう立場に立ったことないから僕にはよくわかりませんね。どういうものだか見当もつかないな」と僕は笑いながら言った。

「ある意味では幸せなんだよ、それ」と永沢さんは言った。”

-「ノルウェイの森」- 村上春樹

In other news, death by readings.