i am where You want me to be

then You crash over me, 
& that's where You want me to be:
i'm going under - i'm in over my head. 

whether i sink, whether i swim, it makes no difference when i'm beautifully in - over my head. 

ninagawa's kafka

i read once somewhere that we only have favourite songs bc they remind us of certain favourite memories, memories which can be lived vicariously through hitting the replay button again & again until the line between song and memory converges and blurs, until the wholeness of that particular experience becomes osmosed into every fibre of our being.

i've been replaying sigur ros' untitled i (vaka) an innumerable number of times since ninagawa's kafka on the shore ended (i've lost count) in order to relieve the magic that was last night bc words will not do justice to how full i had felt during and even after the play. i was brimming - it felt as if that cavern of nothingness towards prior passions was slowly filling up again as i remembered why i had loved literature so ardently prior to coming here i.e. college. i remember telling myself that this fullness, this sense of feeling wholly connected with my soul, was the predominant reason why i had loved words and their potential to bestow form on the formless. there amongst the audience i rediscovered and lifted the lid off my memory box. it was an incredibly amazing experience - the characters were exactly as i had envisaged them in my head while devouring the book: nakata in his pink polo and sunhat, oshima in a crisp white blouse twirling his collection of yellow pencils, miss saeki in the cobalt silk dress / looking professional af in her working ensemble & nude heels, colonel sanders looking just like the mascot from kfc etc. - it was mind-blowing to have my imagination coincide with reality before my eyes: the resemblance was so uncanny i became unsure which elements were constructions of my imagination and which were explicitly stated (by murakami) in the text. there in the theatre i felt as i had never felt in a long, long while, the elusive feeling of being truly alive. it was a finding place - and perhaps afterall i had to step out of campus in order to plug in with myself again - it was a much needed catharsis.

when the play finally ended (to our dismay) and the applause was well-deservingly deafening, i think i understood alittle of what i had learnt in csi lecture in the afternoon - the sense of a collective effervescence, of oneness with the crowd. i felt so incredibly blessed (for lack of a better word) to be sharing this experience of having world-class japanese actors perform for us with people who were coming from a common, shared love for the plot, for having borne witness to the authentic experience of watching the novel in its original language, for having shared this experience with joy & sars who had read the book almost along with me (we read at around the same time so we could talk about it tgt) - people who had shared and still share my exact sentiments about literature. it was a perfect night - even on the way back, joy and i were so adamant on finding the soundtrack bc we knew it was somewhere deep in the recesses of our ipods - we had definitely heard it before & so we were going through every single song by the cinematic orchestra on her ipod, filtering every song through a shared earpiece without any luck & i tried mine and we chanced upon sigur ros at the same time & the moment it played we died alittle inside bc it just brought back a wave of fresh memories from the play. it was the perfect friday night - i was alittle bummed out about having to miss my first halloween in college but in retrospect i wouldn't have traded last night with any other nights - it was perfect in its own right bc i finally found myself, amongst words, amongst people whom i love and who love the same things i love.

stop lapsing into drift mode

finally catching a breather after the submission of three consecutive papers but my happiness has been inadvertently dampened by the first post that i saw on fb - a compilation of pictures wrt elderly people looking at their younger selves in the mirror and perhaps it was the confluence of qrion's soothing remixes in the background and the residual sadness i felt after watching jenn's recent ldr video (that made me feel her sense of loneliness) but oh my goodness i was so close to the point of tearing bc i felt such an indescribable sense of loss (for these elderly people, for myself in advance idk). i am probably not doing my emotions justice but what instinctively stabbed me was that one day i will be old and greying and i will look back to this point in my life - college as the apex of my youth and i will regret not living, not capitalising on my youth, not creating enough memories for myself to keep. i will regret merely drifting and not making the best out of what is supposed to be the time of my life. i feel like i am totally taking the learning opportunities i have here for granted - not bothering to read my texts properly on the pretext that i am tired, telling myself that i am tired of reading things that i am not interested to read - but at the same time not bothering to pick up things that i am actually interested to read bc i am just not in an intellectual mood i.e. procrastination (i am almost never in an intellectual mood i realised), telling myself that i am so done with school just bc of those few minuscule back-to-back assignments etc - it is just this sudden realisation that i have been feeding myself negative thoughts without even consciously realising that i am my own poison. i remember saying once that one of my greatest fears was peaking, but will i even be able to say that i have peaked when i am disintegrated by age???

i was honestly more motivated post-as than i am now and it is appalling bc i am supposed to feel passion in this place more than anywhere else. i am now lukewarm towards writing, lukewarm towards dance, lukewarm towards philosophy of the self etc - i rmb sitting in ppt class today struck by the notion of how the soul and body are so disconnected from each other, if you removed my soul and placed it in a glass jar it would just be a formless, incorporeal substance / so what is this face that i have been staring into the mirror everyday does it actually mean anything on its own?? it's just so scary to have to entertain the thought of my face as a mere shell.

i need to turn my habitual  'so done with school' catch phrase into a 'so into school'. i need to completely revolutionise my mindset that college is a finding place, not a drifting space. i need to reignite my passions and turn them into inexhaustible fuel. i need to start living - for the umpteen time and finally start meaning it.

i am where i worked so hard to be - it is time that i start making use of it.

sovereignty

feel like i am regressing into that cycle (once again) of actively seeking an ideal & being crushed in consequence / pinning the incorporeal on a physical vessel like building a temple to house a particular idol which represents a particular ideal, just so that my unfulfilled affection will & can be concentrated or confined to a central place of "worship". 

i am tired of actively seeking & trying to find fulfilment in human relationships when i know that they can never truly satisfy. i am tired of trying and wishing i could be lord over certain aspects of my life which i desire to see positive changes. god, i look up: bc truly, who can compare to You, who moves my heart the way You do? 

Your love is an end in itself - i have wandered enough. lead me beside still waters. 

-

resolutions are so incredibly hard to keep, nor are labels easy to retrieve once they are stamped - especially in times of loneliness and a singular craved presence.

(god forbid that history repeats) 

traversing

i think i am slowly finding myself again. 

(to anyone who will ever read this: on the contrary, i can be pretty good at conversations if we are not talking about how bad the haze is rn/the weather/how college is so tiring etc i.e. frivolous conversation starters. rather, come talk to me about things which matter to you - your feelings/your faith/your fears/your struggles/your passions - i promise that i am much better at these conversations.)

i am bursting with happiness

virgin movie night in the saga courtyard with eyes peeled on "spirited away", coupled with the tremendous joe hisaishi soundtrack and perfect weather - i have always envisaged the epitome of college nightlife as an outdoor night movie screening with people splayed on the grass patch - with juice, popcorn and nachos: tonight was perfect.

i have never felt so incandescently happy for such a long time - i adore how the fond memories associated with "spirited away" i.e. princesses sleepover are converging with newly-made memories of my best night thus far in ync and fusing into one giant bubble of intangible fondness. also, my suitemate just knocked on my door to hand me a packet of cold milo for energy to last through the night (since my best night is ironically characterised by impending deadlines for assignments but heck them for i am so happy) & it really just compounds the feeling of happiness and thankfulness beaming in my heart. this night has been so incredibly blessed with little pockets of happiness and my heart is so, so full. 

(thank You - for my cup overflows)