Q

Month: July 2012

Day 05

Day 05: A book you love

Nothomb’s The Character of Rain.

It’s not exactly a favorite – because i love my books the way i’d love my children: in different ways but with the same intensity. And i do really, really love this one. I wouldn’t say it’s a great book, not for everyone. The thing is that i’ve read quite a few of Nothomb’s works before this, and have been captured by her genius. The way she thinks, the things she thinks. From her novels, though, were just glimpses of her and what she’s like.

Character of Rain is autobiographical. It goes full out with everything that goes through her mind as a child. As a queer, precocious, arrogant child. I’ve always had a thing for precocious child-stories, because i thought of myself as one. Character of Rain chronicles the intensity of her views as a child: how she thought herself brilliant (and by pure virtue of having thought that, she was), her obsession with reading, her devastating leave from childhood and subsequent anorexia, her perception of childhood, her ideas of beauty, her transcendent take on love, how growing up was essentially a death to her. That’s how i think everyone should live their lives: by coloring it with the vivacity of one’s own thoughts and preoccupations and obsessions and intensity and darkness.

I love this novel primarily because i can relate to it… so i wouldn’t recommend it. It’s perfect to/for me though. When i read it. i felt like i understood myself a lot more. I also felt like my life was more.. real. But at the same time less serious. If that makes sense.

July 12, 2012
Day 04

Day 04: How have you changed in the past 2 years

A lot. A LOT. I don’t think there’s ever been two years in my life where i’ve changed so drastically. It mostly took place in the first six months of ’10 and the six after A levels. Fundamentally i’m still the same – i like the same things (‘cept now i understand why i do), love the same friends (with the addition of a few more), am interested in everything, the same convictions.. but yeah i’ve changed.

Mainly:

– I’m less batshit.. and more rational. If you read my posts in the beginning of ’10, i’m all over the place. Even i get tired reading myself because it’s like i’m constantly OD’ed on caffeine. Not sure where that source of energy came from, but i’ve somewhat exhausted that through JC years (which were tedious). Rationality probably came with age.

– I’m less shameless. I have achieved a shred of social consciousness! This is because of Hwachong. I’m not even gonna sugarcoat it: very few in Hwachong can take a joke. People take things so damn seriously. Certain things you do in SN, and everyone laughs along, plays along, or fuels it. Do the same in Hwachong and it can be taken very seriously. Tell a dirty joke (as a girl) and people stare/condone/judge. A worthy example would be how i went on about people Googling ‘Hwa Chong slut’ and getting on my blog. So it became a joke. I guess some took it at face value because word-of-mouth what people (i didn’t even know) heard was that i was known as the Hwachong flirt. THE FAX. That’s the last thing i did while in HC please. So, right. I’ve toned down a lot of the whole social inappropriateness thing, really.

– I no longer tell my parents everything. Actually, i don’t tell them much anymore. Initially it was because i was in that school-hating period (i dreaded school every morning for months), and thought they’d never understand why because they were the ones who made me choose HC in the first place. When I got used to Hwach, things got better – but i’ve grown up and understood that they don’t necessarily have the power to make everything okay for me. Nor do they know what’s the best for me. Start of ’12, shifting family dynamics and all made me all the more certain of that. Sometimes i think i’m the one who makes most sense in the entire house, so i keep mostly to myself. Unless i need food, money, or transport.

– I can think better. Intellectually, i think JC has done me good. While high school was mostly spoon feeding and memorizing, JC work was a challenge. And secretly i loved that. I loved GP and the arguments i was forced to come up with for AQ and essays. I loved history (although i failed consistently before As) because i actually had to exert myself to think and analyse. I loved economics because i felt like i was learning things that applied to the real world. I loved literature more than i ever did because i had the freedom to explore. I loved ma- no who am i kidding? I practically felt my neuron links strengthening every semester. That’s really what i look for in an education – despite my constant whining about work and the fatigue that comes with it – the need for me to use my brain to it’s maximum capacity (and to expand that capacity). Remnant desire to learn persisted after As, and i read up on everything like a cray.

– I feel less. Refer to few blog posts down.

– I don’t know how this is significant, but diet-wise i’ve matured as well. Frankly.. why my diet shifted was because my hypochondria told me i was at high risk of colon cancer. Yeah it was a legit scare. I used to be really into junky American fat kid food. Everything i ate must be: a) processed b) fried c) loaded with cheese d) heart disease inducing. Throughout JC i tried various cuisines and found that i liked them.. but still abhorred anything healthy. Eventually i grew fond of fruits, accepted (some) vegetables, and left behind Fat Kid food. I didn’t expect this to happen but: food’s a lot nicer this way. My sense of taste became more refined and sensitive and it helps me appreciate real food.. instead of inhaling junk which was my lifestyle awhile ago.

– My ideals. About relationships. I don’t have expectations anymore, be it from a friend or boyfriend. I don’t think you can call it cynical.. i won’t ever want to be that. But i’m practical and i’m always prepared to be disappointed. I know that sounds really sad, but it works. The only one i set expectations for is myself. I’m the hardest on myself, no one else. Not sure when this happened but it was a gradual thing i guess these two years made me realize how everyone’s fallible and you can’t change that you can only change yourself. I still love people though – failings and all, so no worries.

– I need to be alone more often. Someone once told me that he’d never been good friends with an extrovert and since i was one, i must be a closet introvert. After some thought I’ve concluded that these labels are arbitrary. Everyone is none and both. We can love being around others but we all need time to ourselves. I have the best time with others, but I’ll suffer a breakdown unless I get a day off just being alone. Recently my reclusive period’s been longer than usual – it’s ending soon though cuz I’m starting to miss all my friends and want to see them badly.

July 11, 2012
Day 03

Day 03: Something you feel strongly about

Construction.

I HATE THE SMELL THE SIGHT THE SOUND THE INCONVENIENCE OF CONSTRUCTION. I THINK IT IS THE MOST DISGUSTING THING MAN HAS EVER COME UP WITH.

It’s also what i hate the most about Singapore. EVERY FUCKING WHERE i go there is construction and i’m not even exaggerating it’s like Singapore is PERMANENTLY on hold. I can bet you now that AT LEAST 40% of all populated areas’ UNDER CONSTRUCTION NOW. They can finish with one place and UP POPS ANOTHER. EVEN TOWN. EVEN SCHOOLS. EVEN THE HEARTLANDS. EVERYWHERE. IT IS A DISEASE THAT IS RAPING THE CITY. I hate it SO MUCH every time i have to walk past construction which is A LOT OF THE TIME i need to cry and wring some baby koalas. All i’m thinking is WE HAVE CONSTRUCTION SO THE PLACE CAN LOOK PRETTY FOR THE FUTURE. BUT RIGHT NOW HERE IS THE FUTURE OF THE PAST AND YET WE ARE SHITASSIFIED WITH CONSTRUCTION. SO WHAT’S THE POINT? If you’re looking to BEAUTIFY THE FUTURE, construction’s NEVER GONNA END and this entire fucking city will just be constructing ALL THE DAMN TIME.

I HATE CONSTRUCTION.

I know i sound a lot less coherent than usual but construction’s the one thing that gets under my skin the most and i can’t speak of it logically and phlegmatic it. I hate it, and i seldom hate things.

July 10, 2012
Day 02

Day 02: Weird things you do when you’re alone

In public, i’m surprisingly sane when alone. I know this is hard to believe, given how loud and obnoxious i become when out with friends – but it’s true. If you happen to see me wandering around town i look incredibly calm and normal and (DARE I SAY IT).. cool.

So i guess under the public eye, the only abnormal thing about me is that i walk a hell lot. And i visit incredibly strange and obscure places on these walks. Whenever i can i get out and hike around. I’ll start out where civilization is (usually train stations), pick a blind direction and just.. walk. For hours on end. Or longer if i come across interesting places/shops. I also have this thing for dubious looking pathways and corridors; can never resist going down one just to check if there’s an opening to an alternate universe there. Everything is extra fun because my tendency to get lost brings me to completely unexpected places (but also making sure i’ll effectively NEVER find my way back there again if i wanted to.)

This is also why my knees are slightly screwed and i have the most hideous blisters and horse calves.

When alone, i’m still relatively quiet – but i dance around a shit lot. In my room i lose the ability to travel about by usual means. Getting to my closet involves a set of embarrassing shuffling, forward rolls across my bed, a failed attempt at a jump split, and some pretentious pirouettes. I’m highly kinaesthetic and can’t help expending unnecessary energy.

As for the weird things i do do.. they’re really just inane projects that no one else would bother with. I’m not sure how to generalize them so here are some examples:

– Charting out the best places to pinch on the human body and the different physical effects they yield. (Complete with a multi-colored diagram with legends and footnotes and all).
– Making perfume.. yeah. Because i’m obsessed with scents and it makes me happy. Ok?
– Laying out booby traps for my sister. These often fail.
– Playing games with insects. Having tea parties with them. Not really. But i do observe them and play God quite a fair bit.
– Hitler’s genealogy. I’m still incredibly proud of that one, i am.

I’m really a lot less weird than most would expect me to be when alone. I’m mostly quiet and calm, if not a little too prance-y. Other than that i’m just being an autistic kid with obscure interests.

July 9, 2012
Day 01

Because i want to write but have nothing to, about. So here’s my salvation/cheat sheet:

D01: 10 ways to win your heart

1. Bake me cookies. Because i’m a dessert whore and i’ll sell my soul for pastry any day.

2. Ditto for ice-cream.

3. Be intelligent. I’m a complete sucker for intelligent people, regardless of gender and age. I’m like a roach to the incredibly sexy flame of smarts and that was the worst metaphor anyone could possibly come up with. But yeah. I have incredible respect and admiration for people who’re quick witted. It’s not so much about being bookish or being able to spew verses from historical textbooks or figuring out the mechanisms behind the multiverse hypothesis (although that is pretty attractive) – it’s about that quality of spontaneous, effortless ingenuity that really, REALLY gets to me.

4. Make me laugh. Which is not difficult, because almost everything amuses me.

5. Be dorky/no pretentious plz.

6. Be brutally honest. (Also, brutal, because i’m slightly masochistic.) I think i’ve been reading too much Salinger, but approximately half the world’s made up of hypocrites, and the other half of blatant liars – including myself. Honest people bring me so much relief i’m almost always won over by them, no matter how callous they are.

7. Have something they’re interested in. Whatever it is – even a battery collection set. The more intense their interest and the more varied the more attractive a person is. To me, there’s nothing more gormless and repellent as someone without a single affection in their lives. I like it when people become obsessive about things. I think because it reveals how much they’re capable of feeling and that’s kinda hot.

8. Display forms of artistic talent that does not involve dance or theater.

9. To not need me. I’m attracted to independent people and have a strange, crippling complex that makes me flee once i sense needy/clingy. (Trying to work against that though. Trying.)

10. Be a good person and not recognize that. I don’t mean nice or gentlemanly or polite. But just. Yeah, a good person inside. People who don’t pride themselves over being good or aren’t even aware of it – but just are – it kills me. Immediate allegiance.

July 8, 2012
11:53 PM

Something weird happened yesterday night.

I’m still not sure how i managed to decrypt whatever it was i felt, especially in my half lucid stage, but i did. Let me try to explain it as coherently as i can.

So i’ve been sleeping indecently early recently. This is probably a manifestation of my reading Yoshimoto’s Asleep. YES i’ve discovered how easily affected my post-novel lifestyle is by concepts from books. Actually. I didn’t realize this until about five minutes ago.

After Nothomb’s Life of Hunger i starved in the morning and ate my weight in chocolate/desserts at night just to feel the stark contrast between hunger and decadence. I started drawing after Shadow Tag. And Asleep’s made me nap hours in the day, without compromising my obscene ~11pm bed time.

It’s disgusting, i know.

Anyhow. With my infantile sleep cycle comes a stranger quirk. I’d wake up exactly one hour after i sleep (and by exactly i mean by the minute), check my phone, sink back into slumber, then wake up at approximately 5am again, check my phone, sleep, then be up between the 7 – 9 range. Like Terako, sleep lies heavy when it comes. It’s like being submerged into a crop of Devil’s Snare [ref: Harry Potter], the more i try to stay awake the faster i shut down.

I think it was after the first wake when i was Alice in the rabbit hole free-falling back to sleep when this happened.

It was one of those pseudo-half lucid-dreams, but instead of going through something, i just felt something. Like if you were to break down a general dream into scenes, then pick out one scene and whatever i felt at that point, and then filter till you have a specific aspect of that emotion, and then magnify it and concentrate an entire dream with it. Something like that, that’s the best i can go with a semantic explanation. Also i was half lucid so ambiguity is inevitable.

All i remember is that it was pitch black. Not just visually, but.. everywhere and everything-ly. Just darkness. And i felt vulnerable and also scared/worried. But it wasn’t a generic fear. I think labeling it as fear is misleading. It’s an emotion you don’t have a name for – but is real and belongs to the past. Basically i was experiencing an intense emotion i am VERY sure i’d gone through, exactly as i had years ago. If that makes sense.

Yes we all feel anger, or fear, or happiness, at different points of our lives, over and over again and will continue to. But at that moment i understood that every thing we feel is intricately nuanced and varied and tied to that a specific moment. Which makes it near impossible to replicate the exact emotion you feel in another instance.

That’s why whatever happened to me was incredibly strange and disconcerting.

I felt exactly like who i was in the past (around lower secondary, i can’t be sure when exactly now), but cognitively i was in the present (which gave me the privilege of observation, yay). Back then i had nothing to worry about, really. Those were my best years so far. But all the same when you’re young and dumb and only beginning to understand emotions you can’t possibly see that. So, i was vulnerable – that was the predominant state, and afraid.. very afraid. I’m not sure of what. I was basically incapable of restraining my own fear nor did i make an effort to rationalize it.

That’s where it gets interesting.

Having to experience that one past emotion vividly was surreal, sure, but i think it happened so i could make the conclusion i did: That i’ve become so much braver. Or, if you’d like to see it in another way, impassive. And also in control.

I could afford to be vulnerable then, because as ignorant as i was, i must have known that nothing could truly hurt me in that environment and age. I allowed myself to fear without inhibition only because there really was nothing to fear – and thus that fear wouldn’t make me weaker against anything.

It’s pretty obvious that i’ve killed intensity of emotions off along the way, convinced they’re only a hindrance. I do feel, occasionally, anger, disappointment, sadness, but they’re so incredibly diluted i can’t even get myself to stay that way – numbness kicks in by reflex before it gets anywhere. The strongest of my negative emotions are second-hand; they’re on behalf of friends and loved ones. Indignation and anger and worry and fear and unhappiness – they take residence only if felt for another.

Inadvertently it’s also lessened my ability to be intensely and wholly happy. I still am most of the time that – and i’m grateful for being born an annoyingly happy gnat – but it’s a kind of happiness that comes with the knowledge that life will still dish me a lot of crap. I’m alright with that because this happens to everyone when they grow up/out.

It’s just that sometimes i’m not sure if i made the right choice in being so impassioned.

It started when i realized you can never lose if no one can get to you. So i don’t let anyone, or anything, get to me. Nothing upsets me nothing can knock me off balance. Nothing. I can deal with an inordinate amount of shittiness without it upsetting me any much. Even if it does, i bounce back so fast sometimes even i doubt its possibility. (If you want to give it a go – try expecting the worse. When you do, nothing fazes you whatever happens.) That’s the nice part of it, i guess. That i don’t get hurt.

Then again, getting hurt is part of life. Sometimes i miss that depth of emotion – although stupid and makes you vulnerable – because it makes you a little closer to living. I think that’s why there are people who love pathos in their lives, even if they don’t admit it.

July 7, 2012