mortal // immortal

but i keep slipping back bc this pull feels like the gravitation of the full moon - i am the hapless sea that cannot hold itself together, the currents which cannot exert control over themselves - currents which crash against the shore but roll back into their own muck & subsequently carry themselves out to sea again

my will is like a loose polyester shower cap - it sees itself as superior to its plastic, flimsy counterparts: of which (it perceives) their roles as merely perfunctory.  

it is ambitious, proud - maybe even boastful, 

but it perpetually forgets its inherent weakness - try as it might, it can never wrap itself tightly around the head, & must, in turn, sacrifice a few locks of dry hair 

to be marred & pelted by the overhead shower. 

it is the perpetrator of soaked hair & headaches;

the lingering, nagging perturbation that keeps one awake at night, 

with eyes agape & concentrated on occasional light beams that dance on the ceiling;

or the nebulous flashbacks - of things that are merely dreamt of in the head.  

how tragic it is then, 

that i can change a deficient showercap -  

but try as i might,  i cannot change my defective will.

i used to beat myself up inside about my lack of propensity, or rather inability, to let go of my treacliness // my wanting // ideas 

but today i had this small epiphany (you know that moment when two fortuitous thoughts drift into your head & you attempt to draw a bridge between them & out of sheer luck, the bridge doesn't fall) about something i had read from housekeeping (by marilynne robinson) (thank you bunny j for recommending it was/is a really good read) a few days before & trying to suppress my inclination towards sth that i long thought i had gave proper burial to 

this made me understand why that inclination can be buried & still rise up from the dead - it is as robinson so acutely puts it, an "angel" - immortal, timeless & even to some extent, attractive.

& so the angel defeats the grave, transfigures before our very sight, "smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries".

(p.s: thank you jj for telling - no, in fact writing to me that my words have some weight in them) 

uninvited melancholy

listening to soft indie (which is nice for a change bc i had hitherto been listening to soundtracks/instrumentals for awhile just to purge incessant words that lose their meaning in copious amounts) & feeling melancholic for melancholy itself (honestly today has been a pretty happy day- sometimes i really cannot fathom my emotional mechanism)

but actually an introspective kind of sad makes me feel more "me".
realised only recently that i am only capable of  swinging on two ends of the spectrum - either extremely happy to the point of a (supposed) narcotic-kind of high ("supposed" bc i obviously have not taken drugs in such profuse amounts to the point of madness- not even in sickness),
or the kind of contemplative sadness that makes me feel like the only cure will & can be silence, a warm blanket & a mug of hot tea before a good, deep slumber

my uncanny emotions do not allow me to sit on a fence:
failing the two dichotomies,
i fall into a vacuum where i feel nothing
& merely drift
until the day resets itself.

second & mid-week into the june hols: i already feel trapped by my self-expectations, by the monotony of studying for the sake of my future, albeit imperative

my head keeps screaming at itself this rhetorical question:
"WHY THE HECK ARE YOU STUDYING  AND NOT LIVING"
but i ostensibly know the answer; i just can't come to terms with it (even now)

i wish i could be more disciplined, more productive & more efficient though - feel like a freaking snail that is trying to sail past a finish line but a snail doesn't have proper legs!!!

also, found a new (to me at least) way to propel my lazy-&-more-inclined-for-the-bed self to work harder for the end goal by envisaging my results slip next year & seeing in my projected vision a beautiful organised line of *inserts personal goal here*

but then a scary thought flashed through my mind & chilled my spine:

will i be able to face myself if i don't see my goals coming to fruition?

i answered myself, & the answer scares the heck out of me.
(bc how do you run away from your own skin?) 

i don't want to lose myself - neither before nor after - not ever.

//

also i journal-ed this a couple of days before (after midnight): (i believe it was the night after a really good service)

--
do you know what a claustrophobic needs more than an escape
from the four walls that become her world?

she needs God, 
who can give her both a literal
& figurative escape.
no, not by running away before the walls swallow her alive - 
but by speaking truth into these enclosing four walls
& watching them open like the limp flaps of a cardboard carton
to a brave, newer world,
& in so doing escape from the plethora of emotions
that have hitherto plagued & identified with her 

today will be the last day
she will live as a claustrophobic.

--

today i also realised that this is a merely wall in itself - an ideal, albeit valiant but still made of the same cement, the same bricks & even the same mortar

today, she merely dreams up the vastness of the sky 

home

i didn't understand yesterday, but today i do.

felt like a mangled mess of emotions yesterday standing amid a crowd that seemed so happy & released. emotions are a queer thing. sometimes they come like an impudent wave- sudden & insuperable. they hold you hostage without you comprehending how they came about or why they came, but all that you can comprehend is the feeling of entrapment - that feeling that makes you feel incredibly small & alone.

but today i understand why.

i was wrong.
home is not "in my own psyche / in my own skin". 
i felt so torn yesterday precisely because i had asserted the notion of individuality & imposed it upon myself, time & again - hoping that somehow that would make me strong, as if the cycle of re-enacting the notion of "me" would make me merely "me" again.
i asserted & lost it, tried to find it again & lost it, again.
i felt like i had lost what i had hitherto constructed for myself, & as a result i lost myself amid the cycle of internal hide & seek.

i used this to counter my propensity for idealism, but what i had failed to realise was that this weapon is also made of the same blood as my enmity- that they are all one & the same, that they are all shams built upon the foundation of more shams

home is not "in my own psyche / in my own skin".
home is in Your own psyche, in Your own skin.

home is being clothed with everything that is of You:
home is Your sufficiency;
home is trusting without comprehension despite the myriad of emotions that threatens to collapse my insides

home is trusting that You are invincible,
not me.

fleeting

just scribbled down today's lovely evening/night in a note & inserted (yet another) piece of my life in my "jar of felicitous bones": perhaps this is my attempt at consolidating the day's events into something concrete, something permanent, something that is wholly contradictory to the fleetingness of time

do you ever miss a moment even before it is gone?

missing a moment in itself is like holding in a single palm both bliss & vacuity - the hapless feeling of watching & feeling sand slipping through your fingers, when all that you can do is to merely gape at the small spectacle unfolding & think "this is now & now is gone; i am here, not over there" 

sometimes i wish that i could scoop up (with my arms) the moment(s) before me & tuck it (them) safely in my pocket; sometimes its (their) fleetingness haunt(s) me even before i can fully appreciate the moment(s) & embrace it (them) 

i wish my eyes were the camera shutters that take in everything but never forget, like how a photograph can never disown itself because memories may elude the people in the photograph but it still never forgets 

but i can't do either 

& so i will just continue to live for the future (it is so easy to say "live for the present" but find yourself unable to act on it because you are trapped in the future), to jot down memories & attempt to make them concrete (albeit slightly lost in translation) by giving them faces (through words) & stay thankful for the memories that are worth preserving 

//

also was doing abit of revision for "the age of innocence" (because alvls come full circle & y5 work then becomes equally relevant) 

realised i have not lost my enchantment for the ending - indeed i do agree with a particular yt comment that says "it could not have ended any other way" 

no, contrary to people's perceptions of me i do not like sad endings 

but you have to understand that this ending had to end the way it did 

because ideals & real life are irreconcilable in an imperfect world - archer would not have marred his vision with the cruel, macabre speck of reality or even the probable reality of finding out that his ideals tucked in his treasure trove were nothing but shams 

& neither will i

( i have already given them proper burial) 

minutes to eighteen

reminder that you can only be seventeen going on eighteen once in a lifetime

count-down: one hour & fourty-eight minutes

this feels so queer. somehow the word "eighteen" when put into context instills a kind of nebulous fear that is mingled with exhilaration - an expectancy of the unexpected,

as if the coming of age forces me to face the unknown - to look into the mouth of an unexplored cave that may hold treasure (& danger).

my dreams are in my backpack - i carry them upon my shoulders.

count-down: one hour & fourty-three minutes

i am armored. let's do this thing named "future".

dichotomy: -> ??? <-

the duality of dreams:

impel; expel,

pull or a push - 

no, they are unseemingly

simultaneous.

sense of loss

wherefore art thou present 

for the future?

my heart sinks, 

as though it is

payment

in advance

for impending failure.

hustle: the green light

is still beckoning. 

7.40 a.m.

7.40 a.m. 

morning thoughts penned down (on my ipod) during the walk from the train station to the school's parade square: 

thoughts that had breathed "i am invincible, i am invincible", thoughts that had made me smile inwardly, thoughts that were borne out of a fortuitous yet simultaneous series of events 

 //

"this is a place i feel like home": 
home is 
in my own psyche/
in my own skin. 
yes, i am home indeed.

i exist for my own self;
yes, individuality is home.

home is realising that this  
is merely a shadow 
that is ephemeral, 
that will mean nothing soon.

i am home