thinking thoughts already... thunk?

another weekend has vanished. not too proud of being able to do that so consistently. even houdini would've given me a pat on the back.

finally figured out how the drums on blink 182's i miss you go. lovely song.

go listen to jars of clay. now.

one friend says that youth is wasted on the young. another says that we are too young and immature to fall in love. another says we are immature because our prefrontal lobes are under-developed in our teens. it's a bad time to be young. i'm glad i'm turning twenty this year.

damien.

i don't think i'll come across a post as honest and moving as this one is, for a long, long time. coming from a friend we tend to take for granted as a complex, passionate character with a twisted sense of humour, it's all the more amazing.

damien j gomez, for today, i salute you, as a writer, as a friend and as a man.

oh joy.

happiness is the most under-rated thing in the world. we all take it for granted because we're lousy, fickle human beings. laughter is wonderful. it revitalises the soul like no other worldly thing. and the best thing is that everyone can share it.

hey, even the devil laughs sometimes.

beneath a steel sky.

and then i woke up from having dozed off at two in the morning only to realise that it was all a dream. a lucid dream. a dream; a recollection of a past event except that i was aware that i was in a dream and that i could say or do anything i wanted to at any moment, subsequently altering the events that were to follow. a million tangential universes created in the blink of an eye. literally, the blink of an eye.

it was that night at the esplanade, just over a year ago. i relived those moments till i was once again presented with a choice. thankfully, dreams carry no consequences.

i followed my heart this time.

iodine.

she sits across from me, as she always does. whimsical... wonderful... where was i? she's got streaks in her hair now. gentle blonde locks that fade to black seamlessly. she coyly twirls several strands of hair as she speaks. she knows.

like drops of iodine in water the sky bursts and the darkness swells and surrounds us. we walk along the the river, listening to the soft rushes of water. trees lean over idly to listen in on our conversation. it rambles along like the river we walk beside, simple and contented.

there are no stars out tonight. she points to the bright lights in the buildings nearby, and weighs a measure of blame on them. i watch her finger sway in the breeze, weak to the intoxication that comes with twilight. side to side, it goes. she leans back and all the world falls over.

there i stand, arms around her waist, eyes closed, feeling each breath of hers rising and falling. her head is tilted backward and it rests on my shoulder. she raises her right hand and gently touches my cheek.

she turns her eyes towards mine and i make to look away, but i can't. she's asking me something. and i have to answer.

my lips part.

and forever the world is changed.

drinking song - rob dougan

is there a melody - that could lead you to me - like a lullabied child lead to sleep?
so for one moment in time, you'd find that you're mine
and softly i'd kiss you and weep

i want to weave a musical spell
that leaves you unwell and thinking of me everyday
i want to play you a tune that leaves you marooned and troubled
each time i'm away

i want to write a simple song that's so frequently sung
that you call me to have the thing banned
who's sound so endears that whole nations cheer and sigh
when you take my hand

god i'm a gambler that just wants to lose and be allowed to leave
i'm a traveler - with one last mile my journey is complete
i'm like a swallow that wants one long last look, before flying east
last on my list - and then i quit - to kiss your lips and weep.

calling all crackpots.

i just put up a new post at the crackpots site. it's been a while, but things are really difficult right now without first mate withme, scullery maid marion and deck hand rusty pegleg. we're hoping to recruit in the near future, and if you know anyone who fits the bill, we'd love to hear from you. we're looking to expand the team and the website as well as to provide more regular content.

the best thing.

sometimes the best thing a friend can do for you is to give you space to grow by yourself.

maple leaves.

about that conversation with thomas that i mentioned yesterday...

after i asked him about his background, thomas finally decided to ask me something: so what do the people here think of canada?

not knowing what exactly to say, i tried to give a diplomatic answer.

more or less, my answer consisted of the following: "a number of singaporeans have family or extended family living in canada, so they see it as home away from home. others disregard it as the less exciting cousing of america. some others enjoy it for its natural beauty and ambience. a lesser few know it as the second largest country in the world, after the soviet union which split up on christmas day in 1991 (into several smaller countries such as kyrgyzstan, turkmenistan, tajikistan, uzbekistan, kazakhstan and james tan). unfortunately, everyone also associates canada with that local pizza place where you can get two pizzas for the price of one."

i explained it to him and he smiled. really?, he asked, is it as bad as the weather here?

you bet all the mounties in manitoba it is, i replied.

the weather here is amazingly unpredictable. it could be blistering hot one moment and raining domestic animals the next.

he laughed. down there it's just cold all year around. and noisy with all the building and expansion that's going on where i live. i only know four seasons there: winter, still winter, almost winter and construction.

--

there's more but most of it is difficult to capture in words now, the essence having faded away by now. thomas told me about the infamous universal expression that canadians are fabled to have: eh? (pronounced 'ay'). it means anything from 'pardon me?' to 'sure!' to 'hello' to 'you're kidding!' to 'let's go' to 'great!' depending on the context and vocal variety attached to it.

hopefully i'll bump into thomas again someday. i reckon he'll be around for a while, using his franglais accent to seduce unsuspecting girls at night (like petrina. i know you're a sucker for all things franglais) and sulking in his office in near unbearable humidity during the day. welcome to singapore, thomas. i hope enjoy your stay here, i said to him (like a hotel receptionist would have) before i left the post office. his reply as i left?


eh!

i am canadian.

on the train home today i met a young chap by the name of thomas. he's from canada and he's only been here for a week. apparently he just got a job for a canadian company and their first order of business was to fling him to the diametrically opposite side of the globe in order to churn up business in the company's regional headquarters here. wielding a map and an irresistible franglais accent, thomas looked like an american soldier in baghdad: lost, confused and very afraid. bonjour, i greeted him, realising from what he was mumbling to himself that he spoke french. he turned to me, startled. bonjour, he replied, overjoyed to discover that even baghdad has a macdonald's.

luckily for me, thomas spoke english as well. i don't know much french and what i do know isn't very helpful, seeing as how the only questions i know are from my basic conversational french classes. i mean, what's the point in asking a tourist for directions to the nearest restaurant? so we struck up a conversation from outram park to somerset and we got to know a little about one another, but i'll leave that for later.

thomas wanted buy some stamps so that he could mail a letter back to his girlfriend in canada. i told him that the killiney road post office would still be open and that i'd take him there. as i was leading him to the post office, we passed by a young caucasian couple dressed in international school uniforms, seated on one of the benches that lines orchard road. the girl was pretty and from the way the guy was acting, i could tell that she was his girlfriend. thomas immediately cut behind me and winked in her direction.

the guy noticed and stood up immediately, while the girl smiled appreciatively at thomas' gesture. thomas is a pretty good looking guy (think seth green) so it probably came off as a compliment.

hey, did you just wink at my girlfriend? the man asked loudly, his face turning as red as a beet. i backed off, not knowing what to expect.

thomas, though, had everything under control. i didn't wink at your girlfriend, he replied calmly, to which the man, with much thought, countered, don't bullshit me, man.

thomas smiled, and i knew something was cooking.

he edged a bit closer to the guy and said, quietly enough that the girl couldn't hear, not her, my friend. i was winking at you.

cold.

i had to find you
tell you i need you
tell you i set you apart

i realise that there are times when i need people and there are times when i need people to need me.

they are different kinds of loneliness.

what's the difference? it's easy to solve the first problem. you can give your friends a call or hang out with them. the second one feels like a curse.

there's nobody in this world whom you can call if you're convinced that nobody really needs you right now.

to my surprise
and my delight
i saw a sunrise
i saw a sunlight

i am nothing
in the dark
and the clouds burst
to show the daylight

transit.

switching trains to follow beauty
the appraisal of which is my civic duty
she sits beneath the yellow sign
that reads to me in my own mind
as 'please offer your heart to
someone who needs it more than you do'

i know i'm not blindly in love
i've fallen for beauty and the idea of
searching for words to say to her
before she makes to disappear
stay with me for a station more
let me find the words i'm looking for.

spring cleaning. (summer edition)

all right, everyone listen up. i've got this blogroll on the bottom-left there and i want to add some more names to it.

if you've linked this site on your blog/website or if you read this website frequently and would like to share your site with me, leave your name/nickname and blog address in the comments box below. much appreciated folks.

have a good week ahead.

a reply.

anonymous wrote:
right i haven't been online for a while therefore the late comments.

anyway, i think that faith is a very mysterious phenomenon that happens while you are still unaware of it. as in, sometimes letting it come naturally is so much easier than to force something out of nothing. you get what i mean?

i have experienced faith before, though not spiritually. i guess i can identify with the story, about how people can be so full of faith in others to trust them with everything they have. it is an awesome feeling. but the sad thing is, i feel that faith when not maintained and preserved properly will diminish and i doubt the same faith will be found again.

perceptions to me make all the difference. i mean everyone just makes of the world what they want to perceive of it. no one thing is the same to any two people, no one thing means the same either. it's a matter of the interaction of people, time, space, and situations. and in the same way, faith is unique to each individual. the vague idea ans emptions may be the same, but the true force and underlying meanings will be different.

but i agree. one must not fear losing the faith and hence not believing. faith, i believe, is a powerful concept everyone should yearn to experience.

--

i won't try to define the boundaries of faith to you, because i cannot agree with you more that faith is a very personal thing. i say 'thing' for lack of a better term in my vocabulary. it is neither a concept nor an experience. maybe you can find a better way to describe it, but then again, if it's so personal our definitions should differ. to you, it may be like a gentle breeze that blows upon your back, and to me, a general lightness of being.

i agree that perception makes a huge difference. however, it's important to note that our perceptions are formed purely from our experiences. no one is born pro-life or afraid of homosexuals. through instruction or personal experience we build up our beliefs and values. my friend told me yesterday that personality is what we are born with and character is what we develop. i believe that biological processes at pre-birth and birth affect our personalities more than hereditary factors do. that's what i believe for now.

i must make the distinction between faith and trust. when i say that i trust you, i am acknowledging your reliability and dependability. when i say that i have great faith in you, i am acknowledging the magnanimity and promise of good things that lie in your (and possibly our, as a result of your actions) future.

when you take something on faith, what you receive (if there is anything to receive) is dependant on the generosity and benevolence of the other party. when you trust, it is out of the strength of the relationship between you and the other party that they act. though trust is based on experience with the other party, faith is not. thus, i agree that we cannot force faith. we can, however, set the foundations for faith so that we may see it when it does come by.

the possibilities in life are endless because we are offered so many choices in almost every aspect of it. we cannot experience everything in one lifetime. maybe not even in a million lifetimes. faith is taking a leap forward and trusting in the unknown. look back and see that before you listened to your parents when they told you not to touch fire, you took it on faith and didn't. realise also, that no matter how much they told you about what fire or hot things can do to you, you have, sometime or other in your life, burnt or scalded yourself. faith is like refined gold. only when tempered with adversity does the product purely glitter. faith presents you with a path to elysian fields, but before that, you must make your way through forests.

my stand is this: do not think about faith. do not be afraid of it. it is inherently something that you cannot touch, but can feel. it may not be a feeling so pervasive as to tingle all your senses, but faith has a way of letting you know that it has arrived. keep seeking and you'll be able to discern one day. seek earnestly.

keep the joy of faith away from the joy of loving a person. that's my advice to anyone who will listen. they tend to blur the lines of one another, and cause you to mix up their questions and answers without you realising it.

on subjects of which we know nothing, we both believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble, said emily dickinson, who ironically prided herself as a pagan.

if everything is what we perceive it to be, then it must be possible to train ourselves to overcome adversity with renewed perception of our troubles. literally seeing every setback as an opportunity for us to do something else can work wonders in our lives.

the lovely thing about faith is that when it glows so warmly in another person's life, like fireflies, we are attracted to it. and just like those same fireflies, we too, learn to make our own light.

livid.

one reason why i shy away from anger is that people tend to forget the feelings of those around them when they lose their tempers. we are taught to forgive those who raise a hand against us, but the comfort we find in one another is forever lost. how great a loss that is.

i very rarely get genuinely angry at anyone, and i hold it to be best for them, even if they do not believe such a thing to be possible.

suppressing your anger, however, is like trying to hide your shadow. though those who can lift you up do not see it, it completely casts itself onto those always behind you.

quotable.

i had some really great thoughts in my head and an afternoon of flipping through my book of quotations later, i realise that every idea in my head has already been expressed by someone. and beautifully too, at that.

- aldous huxley -

i can sympathise with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. there is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

forgetting that several excuses are always less convincing than one.

there isn't any formula or method. you learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

- alexander pope -

no creature smarts so little as a fool.

teach me to feel another's woe
to hide the fault i see
that mercy i to others show
that mercy show to me

- benjamin constant -

je ne suis pa la rose, mais j'ai vecu avec elle
- i am not the rose, but i have lived with her

- ralph waldo emerson -

a friend is a person with whom i may be sincere. before him, i may think aloud.

i like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching.

if a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

- empedocles -

god is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

for the ladies.

some nights are colder than others without him,
when these sequined stars are strangely dim;
patiently you wait, by the window sill,
intoxicated with memories left undistilled;
holding a thought you've nowhere else to keep,
for the one night he will cry himself to sleep.

one hot minute.

how many times before have you felt so intensely about a person or an event only to watch that passion fizzle off suddenly or fade away elegantly in time, while you smile/cringe/frown to yourself and wonder why it disappeared and what caused it in the first place? you say 'promise to keep in touch okay?' and months later, the two of you have probably only ever exchanged one email, maybe two or three at best.

i don't know whether to hate it for its anti-ideality or accept it as the way things really work between people.

frustration.

it frustrates me.

mathematics doesn't allow us to create new information or ideas, but only manipulate universal properties, concepts and objects, and discover the relationships between them. species of philosophy founded on logical analysis often assume that all subjects of enquiry operate on a 'universal conservation of thought' principle. there are no new ideas, so we must focus our energies of applying our experience to universal concepts.

it is often true, however, that a person cannot comprehend a universal concept unless it is delicately concealed within the context of a personal experience. how can one understand anger, hope, love, faith or trust unless he or she is overcome with rage, filled with anxiety, lost in the eyes of another, in awe of god or betrayed by friends?

frustration; the universal concept of which, is the desire to understand.

minutiae.

whatever the talents, or howe'er designed,
we hang one jingling padlock on the mind


charlie kaufman is a dangerous man. he wields the raw truth of human thought and holds its sharp end to my throat. it's not that his thoughts differ from mine. while i politely decline to entertain them, he jots them down. he can discern between what we think about and what we really think about. the opening lines of his joel barish character in the movie eternal sunshine of the spotless mind make too much sense to me. i'm left wondering why the lines sound familiar, like an old echo still resonating in my head. then i realise that these are the kind of thoughts that go through my mind. thoughts that i've made a habit of regularly dismissing as the irrational side of my conscience. thoughts that, no matter how lost i would think i am in this world and its workings, tell me more about myself than i would want to hear about. the awareness frightens me. i'm tempted to confront these thoughts and to finally entertain them; to reach into the id even and pull out whatever hides in the recesses of my mind.

the most poignant of our memories have a way of boring into our subconcious and taking residence there. there's a narrative running in the background of my mind when i think over something. it asks question after question and tries to find patterns and logic in events, places, people; anything that i'm thinking about. i like to look at a stranger and guess his or her hidden traits by the way he does something ordinary. i silently question my intentions when i speak. i usually have something good to say when i don't.

my belief is that we have all got thoughts hidden away behind padlocked doors in our minds. often, happenstance allows them to emerge and surprise us. simplicity of the soul is never a cure. it is but a shelter from the storm that is complexity. we, the unwary, are always, always susceptible to being caught in it.


eternal smiles his emptiness betray
as shallow streams run dimpling all the way


(italicized quotes taken from the works of alexander pope)

because kaveh asked.

tonight, i won a date with tad hamilton, 'tad' obviously being short for tadpole. by fate, or chance or destiny, or whatever it is that puts you in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong choice of movie, i found myself resigned to one hour and forty-six minutes of tad hamilton. i'll save this review for thecrackpots.com, because that's where the rape and pillage belongs.

you know what? i know what i'm going to do now. the nice guy gets the girl in the end because tad was really just a movie star who didn't know what he wanted. and there're these two lines about the different smiles that the nice guy and the girl had and that's about it. there. i hope, in my heart of hearts (wherever that may be), that i have truly, completely spoilt the ending for you. yes, that's right. why? you may ask. because you must never watch this movie, as long as you live. far tamer crimes have been committed in the backalleys of hollywood than this one.

people, when i said i was going to become a movie junkie, it didn't mean that i was going to watch anything that occurred between a trailer and end credits. i have taste. and this one tastes like frog.

comments.

i've put up a backup comments system, just in case my enetation comments system decides to hide people's comments from the prying eyes of blogciety. it's the boringly labelled comments (0) link below my usual arcing flames thing. it might get confusing after a while, but we'll see how it works out for now.

movie junkie.

that's right, everyone. along with my desire to read classical texts, i have also developed a desire to watch as many movies as my eyes can take. i have to make up on lost time (ie. youth) so i have already earmarked gramophone to be my provider of choice. i'm going to watch almost every movie that they have in there, from A to Z, and i'm going to start now. got some dvds i need to clear up first, though. oh heaven. just watched the butterfly effect on friday, and dawn of the dead yesterday (reviews on thecrackpots.com soon) and i'm going to watch monster, lost in translation, kill bill vol. 2, hell boy, walking tall, the rundown, passion, intolerable cruelty, once upon a time in mexico and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind in the next week or two. that's just about a movie a day. yum.

on my 'to get by any means possible such as organising a military coup on a small island in the pacific so long as they have a decent movie rental shop i can loot' list are the following:

confessions of a dangerous mind
adaptation
human nature
being john malkovich
(all charlie kaufman masterpieces)
love actually
(because all the girls say i have to watch it)
master and commander
starsky and hutch
(because it must reside in my collection)
zoolander
matrix : revolutions
the godfather
(because.)
shawshank redemption
pulp fiction
memento
american beauty
requiem for a dream
monty python and the holy grail
donnie darko
blade runner
princess mononoke
(the other miyazaki masterpiece)
big fish
nightmare before christmas
(both from the marvelous, twisted mind of tim burton)

a tale of faith.

two girls fell into a patch of wild grass as they played out in the fields. they started to feel itchy all over so they walked down to a nearby lake to see if they could make it stop. both girls were afraid to get into the lake because they could not see how deep it was, and there was nothing nearby that they could cling onto once they got in . they decided to scoop up the water with their hands and pour it over their own heads. while it initially felt soothing, they soon felt the itch come back. and it came back worse than before because of the relief that the water had temporarily given them. they tried again, but the itch felt even more intolerable. the more water they used, the harder it was to bear afterwards. they eventually agreed that jumping in might do the trick, but both of were afraid of being unable to swim. finally one of them got in. the other girl lay by the bank and held the other girl's hand. the girl in the lake felt the itch disappear, and though her toes were far from the bottom, she felt comfort in the palm of the other girl's hand.

though we all face difficulty in our lives, there are those around us who will help us reach greater levels of faith in all things. there is no doubt that all of us are mortal and that the comfort others give us come from an idea of love through which all things may be achieved. our actions are but a personal-experience-influenced expression of such universal ideas. belief comes through the repeated confirmation of our observations with respect to cause and effect. if we see that a particular cause always precedes an observable effect, through experience we confirm this process and it falls into our subconcious. if you placed your hand over fire, you would expect to feel heat. we form beliefs through which we perceive everything else that happens to us in our lives.

belief in god goes against man's natural tendency to complicate matters. it is a way for him to simplify all occurences in the world, including those that directly and indirectly affect us, and to link their cause to one, all-knowing, all powerful being.

david hume believed in 'impressions', the universal ideas from which all else is derived. it is something i have long believed in as well - he was the first to put it into words for me, and paradoxically, this further proves his theory. everything that exists is a copy of these simple notions, and these are our ideas. experiences are what makes these unique. back in april last year, i wrote this:

i'm but a mirror of those before me
it is only memories and experiences i have to call my own.

we are reflections of humanity over the ages. to some, we are imperfect reflections of a perfect god. not only do we look different from one another, we have different pieces of his knowledge somewhere within us. we are all capable of grasping these universal ideas.

when we see a table in a room, what goes into our eyes is light reflected off of the table. what we see is what our mind makes of those images. when we leave the room, does the table cease to exist? does our interaction with that table make it exist or is it there only because we can perceive it. is the grass the same green to me as it is to you? how else can we tell the difference unless you read my mind? why is it that the skin of someone you love is softer, gentler and more radiant? onward i could go, complicating the subject further, but i shall stop here.

whatever you wish to believe, faith is inherently an all-consuming concept. like the story of the girls and the lake dictates, you cannot cure an itch with liberal applications of water. you must immerse yourself in it, and with the love of a supreme being or others, you can find comfort in it. do not be afraid of the unknown solely because it is an unknown; be afraid of it because you have let it remain so. the next step is to conquer that fear and step into the darkness.