a season of waiting

feels really good to wake up with a heart full of faith, especially after a cloudy night of feverish thoughts which tell me i am not good enough & thus am singled out to wait, once again (as if this is a measure of my worth??? but late night thoughts are often more warped than fresh thoughts which come with the dawn of a new day).

was leafing through my journal just to ascertain how true & good god has been to me - his sheer providence during the madness of a level days & his promises which were prayed over me, time & again. one particular promise (which had been prophesied over me two weeks before the actual a levels) has been the bulwark of my faith:

he will take me from strength to strength & glory to glory (if i believe) 

the former clause of his ultimate promise has already been fulfilled last year,
& i am still awaiting the latter of his ultimate promise, for the ultimatum.

this is no longer just prepping myself for false hope & aggravating the back-breaking fall that may succeed. this is believing that god does not do a work halfway, but sees it to its glorious fulfilment.

(do not tell me not to hope, bc hope is all that i have left before the door really closes)

i can finally feel !!!

have been working for five consecutive days this week & i am tired as heck but surprisingly enjoying the fulfilment of taking better ownership of time - as much as i love to laze around, the sweetness of rest is only truly emphatic with labour (just like the coveted one hr break after 11pm before bedtime, watching mindless yt vids that i absolutely used to treasure last yr). this rings ironically in my own ears (or eyes) but i think work has been slowly extricating my being from a state of stasis & the aforementioned desiccation.

for one, i am less apathetic about life & beginning to feel strongly about things again - which is a really good sign of recovery. happiness is crawling into bed after a long day, languid & aching but snuggled up in my trusty pink blankie, with cushions & the time traveler's wife (which is easing me out of my reading rut !!! finally, after a deadlock preceded by three seemingly promising but disappointing books. i usually try to finish a book as quickly as possible so that i don't seem like such a loser on goodreads - stagnant on a book for weeks; but i am deliberately snailing on this one bc i rly don't want it to end & i am afraid i'll hit a reading wall again). happiness is waking up with the sun while it is still relatively docile & watching its rays filtering into the kitchen gradually; happiness is sizzling my own bacon & cheese on a pan (bc i am not that alien to cooking now i.e. currently learning how to cook !!! which i am so glad i finally am) for breakfast & making my own wrap for lunch - occasionally even throwing in a salad for cleansing even though i know that the thousand island dressing defeats its purpose of existence. happiness is relishing in leisure time rather than deliberately wasting & wishing it away - the precondition of cherishing lies in its scarcity, which i now possess. (lol that oxymoron). happiness is also finding new music to fuel the soul i.e. mansions on the moon - also, is it weird that i use soundcloud as my predominant music channel/to listen to beats/alt music??? 

crude realisation that this post is pretty pointless with stale revelations that i had alrdy known i.e. happiness taking the form of simple things but i am just so happy that i am finally writing & feeling again 

(still waiting for the ultimatum but as each day inches towards that day of knowing my heart increasingly clenches like a fist & sometimes i really just pray to God to let me have my way in this & i pray so hard that this dream of mine is also his & i wonder if i am once again blurring the lines between faith & expectation but God, you know best, you know best)  

ultimate desiccation

desiccated. lacklustre (in the pursuit of fulfilment/passion). i am a desert. the oasis is a merely a hole of dried earth. why is there hardly a thing now that can make my heart beat with euphoria, just like the old, golden days??? perhaps now is a season of unfortunate convergences - lost that sheer luck to get my hands on a good book/movie/flow of language etc (even my sentences are so awfully disjointed rn) that can redeem me from my passion-centered stasis. there is trouble when i simply become disinterested even in living vicariously through someone else. why does passion in all forms elude me all at once?? (i feel like only the ultimatum can be my trump card out; but it is still lying in the deck & may never be mine - yet i also know that it makes sense to hope for the best & not expect at all. the line invariably blurs between faith & expectation - if i believe that God can make a miracle, does that imply i'm expecting him to come true for me??)

i keep looking back to the past for reference & it was truly the bad that had coloured the good into magnificence. how precious the good had seemed then. yet, i wouldn't want to go back - this is my dilemma. i am uncomfortably comfortable in my wizened cocoon.

solitude used to charm me like an addiction. now i feel like i need to be around people to ward off the boredom of being a profligate (of time). funny how the (hopefully momentary) absence of passion leaves a void that mutates even my intrinsic personality.

pride

it is so convenient to point fingers at the perpetrator who has fired up these dormant flames of indignation - as that sense of self-entitlement chafes against my insides & bears its fists, bringing violence for a little token of vengeance. for killing my pride, i am convinced my wrath is justified.

yet,

how much is this pride worth? why do i hold on so dearly to it, as if it defines & measures my self-worth? (whatever happened to "no one can make me feel irrelevant without my consent"??)  this very pride is the actual perpetrator of utter decimation i.e. any remaining shreds of humility, kindness, love (etc) left in that (already) crowded out heart.

// !! stop sleeping !! you are rendering yourself irrelevant, not them. all it took was a shove & you are down on the ground, wailing out in frustration & fighting back bouts of madness. the way to fight back is to fight what's inside - has God not pointed out to you this since the dawn of march? //

give honour where honour is due 

(perhaps, this is Your favour clothed in a disguise) 

waiting for the ultimatum

this is me

sitting on the edge with

bated breath, 

beckoning for the ultimatum. 

(of dreams hitherto conjured)

so that there can be

rest -

from this marathon of covetousness, of silent envy;

which has made a farce

out of bona-fide friendships 

or unmitigated happiness for someone else other than the 

carnal self.  

with frosted breath,
i wring my hands
and wait.

rest in peace, mr lee kuan yew

"integrity of life is fame's best friend, which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end." 

(duchess of malfi, john webster) 

i am thankful for my education that has enabled me to internalise the extent of his contributions to singapore; but more importantly, i am so immensely thankful that his wholehearted & passionate devotion to building up this country has even enabled me this education in the first place. 

thank you mr. lee, for epitomising the integrity of life with such a fierce passion that it inspires me to emulate in your footsteps. as i've taken away from literature classes last year: even though death is universal & "...all things have their end", the honest mourning of the entire nation stands as a testament to your greatness, which "nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end."    

on reading // (kickass) j.w. quotes

haven't posted in awhile & i was just pondering over why i have a natural inclination towards reading (possible interview q) so here are some beautiful jeanette winterson quotes i took down while reading "why be happy when you could be normal" while listening to some kickass xolo (btw the book title is more apt than it seems bc that was what j.w's mother told her wrt to her sexuality !!!)

“i believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. we are not silenced. all of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. the thing is stuck. 

we get our language back through the languages of others. we can turn to the poem. we can open the book. somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words.” (9)

"a tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. that is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it is.

it isn’t a hiding place. it is a finding place." (40)

“i had lines inside of me- a string of guiding lights. i had language.

fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. what they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. i had been damaged and a very important  part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life; but on the other side of the facts was who i could be, how i could feel, and as long as i had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then i wasn’t lost.” (40) 

“it took me a long time to realise that there are two kinds of writing; the one you write and the one that writes you. the one that writes you is dangerous. you go where you don’t want to go. you look where you don’t want to look.” (54)

“books, for me, are a home. books don’t make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space. 

there is warmth there too - a hearth. i sit down with a book and i am warm. i know that from the chilly nights on the doorstep.” (61)

“her suffering was her armour. gradually it became her skin. then she could not take it off. she died without painkillers and in pain.” (69) 

“on the top of the hill looking out over the town i wanted to see further than anybody had seen. that wasn’t arrogance; it was desire. i was all desire, desire for life. 

and i was lonely. 

mrs winterson had succeeded there ; her own loneliness, impossible to breach, had begun to wall us all in.” (105)

also j.w. words, so astutely, my idealistic (& unhealthy) perspective on love: 

“when i walked away that night i was yearning for love and loyalty. the wide yearning of my nature had to funnel through a narrow neck - it went into the idea of “the other”, the almost twin, who would be so near to me but not me. a plato-like split of a complete being. we would find each other one day - and then everything would be all right. 

i had to believe that - how else would i have coped? and yet i was heading for the dangerous losses that “all or nothing” love demands.” (120) 

finding my language through the words of others is why.