"the world is unfinished"

i am so prolific with happiness that i feel like i can implode - & should i burst like confetti (hypothetically) out of this rare overflow (& in doing so, self-destruct), i feel like for once, my soul will not despair at the remnants of what is left of me, but will rejoice at the convivial scatter of colourful streamers that serve to commemorate a happy death.

alvin pang's short workshop today (held in sch) was so incredibly inspirational - maybe because Passion was an esteemed guest & its aura had diffused into the valves of my heart. i really enjoyed seeing passion & invincibility exude from his personality & outlook not only on literature - but on life in general i.e. to make a future for yourself rather than wait for it passively, as if opportunities fell from the sky - like shells in a war. i don't even know him personally (unless today's short chat counts) but i really felt a sense of ineffable camaraderie, i really did (or maybe bc i was just excessively happy). 

i think that if he retains an arcane impression of me (in the long run, which i highly doubt but-), it will be a vague memory of a sheepish girl handing him his book to be autographed twice. it was incredibly embarrassing but i am so glad that i had managed to pull a counterfeit, thicker skin over my reddening face & get the task done. as i watched him sign on another page of the same book (that i had previously asked him for an autograph a yr+ ago), i felt so inexplicably consumed by happiness - i was so full, so satiated, i really thought that i could have choked on breathing in happiness. (happiness comes in many different shades but this is by far my favourite kind of happiness) 

stayed back w jj & a new friend to chat for awhile with him (which was honestly pretty daunting bc he is so smart!!!!) but what made my heart sing inwardly was how seriously he took all of us - our perspectives & our ambitions. idk, maybe he is just the kind of person who can make you feel important merely by looking at you seriously in the eye & addressing your question(s), your hopes & your ambition(s). i feel more heartened about something that i have been considering for quite awhile, & today just cemented it further when he told me that if i ever joined the trade, i can "come and look for me(him)". 

this episode today effectively made my day whole - i could not stop smiling, no, beaming the moment i set foot out of the classroom. it was happiness that refused to be contained (& had no reason to be). i think perhaps people thought i was mad but i really didn't (& still don't care) what they thought bc such days are scarce & i need to live them to the fullest. 

i need to remember how i had reserved unveiling the signed book in a quiet place (with as little human interaction as possible). i felt like a child awake & bouncing in jubilee on christmas morning, eager in anticipation to unwrap a promising present.  i could not wait until home so i had carefully retrieved a.p's book from my beaten & worn out kino plastic bag (with the blue coating frayed at the edges) at the back of a relatively empty bus with charlie lim's "there is no love" in my ears. (it just felt perfect to saturate myself in everything which was what i had perceived - & still do, as perfectly sgporean). i need to remember how i had tenderly flipped through the beginning pages & felt my heart collapse in utter bliss when my eyes glossed over what he had written - albeit short & spontaneous. he wrote:

For Denise, again 

"We resort to words

the comfort of them

testing the silence

for echoes" 

i need to remember how i had run them over my tongue an innumerable amount of times until their weight had completely osmosed into my soul, & how my heart died & went to literary heaven.

p.s: also, today it struck me that "happiness" is my favourite word for describing happiness - the emotion. there may be many synonyms that may come off as more sophisticated than this seemingly incompetent adjective, but it is precisely bc of the simplicity of this word that makes it beautiful & thus fully encompasses its true meaning - afterall, happiness is often at its peak when it is unadulterated.

love

"a new command i give you: love one another. as I have loved you, so you must love one another." (john 13:34) 

"bless those who persecute you, bless & do not curse." (romans 12:14)

it!!is!!so!!incredibly!!hard!!to!!love!! & most of the time i find myself swimming in a mire of carnal thoughts; yet at the same time it reminds me so poignantly of Your unmitigated love for me that so readily negates my iniquities & turns them from scarlet to white.

lord, i make a deliberate choice to honor You,
to (try to) be set apart for, no - because of You.

lead me with Strong hands

night x loneliness

the night is either self-satiable or utterly lonely - no, this is not loneliness emanating from a void that needs & can be filled (by any human from a world that hardly cares, or cares too much). this is a kind of loneliness that does not know what it wants & knows no drugs - a type of loneliness that deliberately negates human interaction bc it knows it needs to be left alone, but does not know why or how. yes, loneliness is like a spoilt child in a tantrum: a child who thrashes his hands wildly to attract parental attention & is furious regardless of the treatment he gets.

 the night is quiet, or deafening for want of hearing

catharsis without words

catharsis from floweredfaces on 8tracks Radio.

tfios & other thoughts

today feels absolutely precious: i cannot remember a day this year where i had awoken according to the whim of my deficient body clock & not a mechanical alarm clock that greets & beckons me to face a weary new day at ungodly hours (esp in the past few days where i had forced myself up before 6am to memorise/look through notes for the morning papers ahead bc unprepared as heck)

i think i am back in the mood for some happy indie rock tunes instead of wordless playlists // !!i cannot stop dancing in my chair as i am typing this!!

anyway, was too languid from a late night out (after the last lit paper) yesterday for a coherent post & i have a visceral inclination towards documenting down my thoughts so this shall suffice as an outlet.

celebrated the end of an arduous half-week (& the preceding 3+ weeks in preparation) of term III papers with our traditional lunch/dinner movie date i.e. tfios

(as a sidenote i am not really a fan of john green's books bc i may be generalising but they seem more centered on adolescents falling in all quirky kinds of love which is not really my cup of tea but i am an avid fan of john green the vlogger bc nerdfighteria. just have to mention somewhere that i felt a surge of pride inside yesterday thinking of how madly popular tfios is in sg right now - an infinite mile away from its birthplace in a different continent. also felt really honored that i had been part of the process - albeit passive & one-sided - through watching his vlogs from the time he found out that his book was going to be made into a movie to the times of actual filming & the current reality now - on the big screen - which reminds me: i shall find a day to read tfios after the trend wears off bc personal book-reading policy)

i have queer, ill-forming eyelids today thanks to movie yesterday - the perpetrator for exhausting the water banks stored behind my eyelids. the movie was not particularly sad in a blatant-punch-in-your-face manner; rather, i think it was in a subtle kind of way that utilised the mechanism of empathy that is omnipresent in every human being?

(spoiler alert: if you haven't watched the movie, continue reading at your own risk)

i can only remember two scenes that hit me particularly hard:

the first scene was when hazel was a thirteen year old on the brink of death with water suffocating her lungs: it broke me when her mum whispered to her "it's okay honey, you can let go now." i cannot envisage the immense strength & courage it took for a deeply-attached parental figure to whisper that to a struggling child. the immensity of negating a personal longing out of a pure, unmitigated noble love - & consequently suffering so hard for it - i don't know, i imagined the knife doggedly going through her heart & it went through mine too.

the second scene that was equally sorrowful as the former was when hazel, who had waited a lifetime to meet her prized author, was cast to the ground and trampled over by his words & dishevelment. i cannot, or rather, am too cowardly to try & internalise that brokenness that she had felt (as a fictional character). ideals are something that i hold very close to my heart & seeing her ideals thrown ruthlessly against the wall & subsequently smothered into ashes -esteemed to the heavens in her head & degraded to shambles by the macabre speck of reality before her by a haggard, apathetic drunkard -i have no words to describe that except that it was utterly cruel.

it also kind of reminded me of one of my lit texts - a play rather, that i had read through for my afternoon lit paper the morning before. it reminded me of the last act in lady windermere's fan by oscar wilde - probably because the lines kept chaffing against my heart when i first read them:

lady windermere: we all have ideals in life. at least we all should have. mine is my mother.

mrs erlynne: ideals are dangerous things. realities are better. they wound, but they're better. 

lady windermere: if i lost my ideals, i should lose everything. 

perhaps this is also the reason why i am so intransigent about them & cannot seem to let them go.

coming back, i felt the movie had a couple of faults too:

1. i really didn't like the "okay?" "okay." motif in the film - maybe it is just me but the recurrent use of it cheapened the novelty, charm & most importantly the intended significance of it. it kind of reminded me of the former unceasing "forever?" "forever." exchanged between the previous couple that they themselves had found repulsive.

2. the make-out scene on the bed - inwardly i was screaming why, why do you mar the purity of the relationship & consequently cheapen your love??? must "making out" be the ultimatum that consummates a relationship???

other than the two perceived flaws mentioned about, i thought the movie was worth the time - albeit a little conventional & predictable.

support john green & crew bc that will make me happy :-)

// also, i realised something else about myself today: i can only venture to put into words ideas & thoughts that i wish to see myself as - often i only internalise & write down half of a whole - bc to do otherwise will compel me to admit the part of me that i don't wish for anyone to see - even myself.//

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