Hah, the erotic ennui. So many dreams. or pseudo-reality. night, legs, faintly brushing. little bristles, or vestiges of the fur we were one supposed to have.

"Ah, little prince! So it was, gradually that I came to understand your melancholy little life! For a long time your only pleasure had been to watch the gently setting sun."

I haven't exactly been updating everyday, which yes, I feel is unfair for my poor little journal. In fact, yes, before I probably grew up and was mature, there were so many thoughts that I left out. Sometimes, writing can be like a religion. You only turn to it when the chips are down. Lately, anyway, of course I've been worrying about my identity and my shortcomings. A lack of initiative, determination in some respects. I'd like to think things have improved over my years in junior college, and indeed, that have a little. Yet also I realise that I am also not half as spontaneous or fun-loving as I would like to be...probably because the year is drawing to a close and I lose the enthusiasm I always have at the start of the year.

And lately I have been confused. What do I want? I read in the news about this girl who succeeded by writing what she wanted on a piece of paper. Well, I wish I was that clear. There is such a bewildering array of choices out there. Do I wait for an illusory temptress to tempt me out, or someone spontaneous to sweep me away? (why do I sound like a girl. Will I find someone whom I find can understand me well? Or, have I in my vain hope in the future, unfortunately overlook the friends I already have who are all perfect in their own little way. Anyway, today was quite a classic case of Monday Blues. Little short shower at the start of the day, and of course, I asked for an OCP because i felt I couldn't trudge through another day of school. So I met Clarence, and we went off to Tanglin Mall to study. I had McDonalds, which proceeded to make me feel shitty for the rest of the day, because I've heard they try to upset your stomach so you leave quickly. Rumin was there too, always nice to talk to, although I was being very quite anyway. Three is a horrible number to be out in, especially if like me, you aren't good at conversing two people at once. So one is always left out. It's different in a larger group or on a one to one basis.

Incomplete shitty poem, let me get it out of my head first, i'll fill the gaps later

Urban Seasons

So you're born in February
the shortest month of the year
the card where you were incy-wincy
to make fun of you being such a shortie.

with no snow to tell the seasons by
just the haze, humidity, maybe the sun
moving slowly through the sky
to which you'd timidly reply

"i defy you star!", from the plays you've read
or would like to, if not for Social Studies
or other subjects which you dread
yet the meter and rhyme prove

Past March then, of waiting, in another year

the constant anxiety, constant fear
of being labelled unsincere

which makes the poet board the vessel
of his imagination with great caution
and rig his mast with his big sail
and the risk of being caught by label(sued for libel)

An April where some had left
and they drank a lot to send them off
sailors to a distant sea
from an island of prosperity

the luxury pleases me, i'd love the park
we walked through, to catch the bus
months later, to board that bus again
easy memories come through the dark

which turn to head-gnashing and regret
'O have i missed such beauty?'
yet peaceful still, i sit on yet
so many people i haven't met.

A May comes by, or is it Shall?
What ought i do, what ought I not?
I'll wait, patient as I built my wall
while others choke at my lack of gall.

June is here, let's play footie!
no she's not just another name
Bet your money, bust the bookie
want to win big cannot be so hum-ji

July sits there equally pensive
on the wood-panelled class benches
eyes that look yet so evasive
yet perhaps, it's a look that i misgive

August, does it feel like your year has ended?
The rose withered, the eyes now glare
not knowing how to treat those you befriended
where's the power that i needed?

with the rest of the months yet to come
thirty, or thirty-one days? count your knuckles
then crush them on some stupid sum
to take your mind off your sinful

The years don't matter, nor the days or months
We dust them from our dark recesses
Things to tell the passage by
so life then wouldn't feel so dry

This is an imprimatur to your being!

I A child is born.

No longer simply a narrator, but by rules of Australian diction, a na-writer.

i don't think the crush is over, i think it merely starts again when you see each other again.

hello. do you think you're being fair to me? i don't think so. I feel so arrogated and torn. Yes I always speak in generic, hushed tones, but it is to avoid hurting. I hate pointed, sarcastic remarks meant to hurt. they don't accomplish anything. sarcasm always appeals when pointed at third parties, never at the person you're speaking to.

how extreme my thoughts can be in private. you know it does not work. there is no coherence within the entire thing, what is the reason you have given. all, phrases, jumbled against a brick wall, tumble, fall and crack. joyous. crackdown on every facet of national being. yes that is what i have to do to escape the vagaries of life. of course you think of what to say. you're lousy, and for that i blame you. unceromonious. but this is perhaps only a vision for myself, not for others, but you cannot be so visionary, so blind! yes, made and unmade by the same passion, by clever collections of turns of phrase, by sophistication and elegance, by beauty and whim. pimples like buds on white cheeks, a smile, a smirk, a smile, faintly mocking, yet genial, did i sense desperation? a knock on the window, undiscipline, now, but you are my leisure! i have spent so much on work, maybe i ought to just unwind now, with someone who understands myself, myself, although i do not understand myself. regret. why you had not done that, this is the best way because you are lazy to organise, and also, organisation, any form, simply ruins the spontaneity of it, anyway, no one else is reading who seeks to understand, the same colour of the uniform, the overriding thought. on the stairs, eating, opposite, surprise. and beauty again.but him, on another day, with another girl. so you see, perhaps i am special. but i shall not unwrite what i have written, and sift through them for gems. but no, not, everyone else thinks the same, faithful only to ideas, for some time. the novelty wears off, as it did for me, as it will for me, but as it hasn't now.yet still you do not dare, embarassed, are you? by the stars, made of paper, in the sky, and how the saint makes you cry. as it did, for something abstract, for you are to me but a spirit. witty eroticism, charged as we look on, but it's just me again, but it is what gives my days spice. oh. outside is so different from the inside, how they will tremble if they see. in me there is much that scares, and scars. proud. O felix culpa! They always talk of sin in longing tones, original sin, all the songs. and i shall not surrender to sleep yet. alas, i am getting more coherent, which should be no tragedy. and end. maybe start again later. all along i have been scared because i do not wish to be judged, even by myself, but perhaps this is willed by some internal force. at least you will remember,

8th of Jul, 9 at night.
People are chatting everywhere, on phone lines and chat rooms. I could talk. But conversation escapes me, because nowadays I am too fiercely embroiled with my own issues, very much a fault of mine. Not issues of national importance, but simply sitting, and wondering. In a way I have lapsed back into a very elegiac, yet pessimistic mood. Perhaps it would help to talk to myself. Maybe Ariel can be my spirit.

Jesse: Hi
Ariel: Hello
Jesse: So what appears to be the problem now?
Ariel: Same old things, nothing much.
Jesse: Self dialogue is so hard without stimulus.
Ariel: It's called inspiration.
Jesse: You're miserable.
Ariel: You're having quite a lot of problems relating to people now.
Jesse: I know.
Ariel: ...
Jesse: (sigh)

long time no see.
bad things these. exams. not really. gives one an aim. but not enough time to think...dearly beloved.

this. is a nice song.

She came from Providence, the one in Rhode Island
where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air.
She packed her hopes and dreams like a refugee,
just as her father came across the sea.

She heard about a place people were smilin',
they spoke about the red man's way, how they loved the land.
And they came from everywhere to the Great Divide
seeking a place to stand or a place to hide.

Down in the crowded bars out for a good time,
can't wait to tell you all what it's like up there.
And they called it paradise, I don't know why.
Somebody laid the mountains low while the town got high.

Then the chilly winds blew down across the desert,
through the canyons of the coast to the Malibu
where the pretty people play hungry for power
to light their neon way and give them things to do.

Some rich man came and raped the land, nobody caught 'em,
put up a bunch of ugly boxes and, Jesus, people bought 'em.
And they called it paradise, the place to be,
they watched the hazy sun sinking in the sea.

You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina
just like the missionaries did so many years ago.
They even brought a neon sign 'Jesus is Coming',
brought the white man's burden down, brought the white man's reign.

Who will provide the grand design, what is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here.
We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds
in the name of destiny and in the name of God.

And you can see them there on Sunday morning
stand up and sing about what it's like up there.
They called it paradise, I don't know why.
You call some place paradise - kiss it goodbye.

STUDY.

listening to don't speak now...nice.

what's it like to be reborn? well, you could ask those who've gone through rebirthing...how about amnesiacs? a new life.

what's it like to be my grandmother?

the thing is that i do play myself in a certain role, or i see myself in it, without other people necessarily seeing me in the same way, a bit of a solipsistic world view(not narcissistic, i hope.) we find ourselves crying at movies, at the intensely hurt lead, seeing ourselves in that position, wanting to hurt ourselves too, to achieve a dramatic vision.
smoking sucks, or it's supposed to anyway, as so many people have been harping upon it. but sometimes it really can be glam on screen. it's a sign of a devil-may-care attitude, i've had so much suffering anyway and all...oh i don't know.

well yeah, anyway as clarence has been talking to agnes and talking about suicide and death and his friend siwei...well. is it possible to keep an open mind about it? should we attempt to understand why people do it? discourage it? accept it when it happens? it's possibly impossible to accept when it happens anyway, until after some time. that's what makes the appeal of suicide so powerful...it's power on the living...because death does get the living to sit up and notice. notice for all the times i've been lonely, depressed, not listened to. "too visionary, too blind." Of course, I do think about it, never how I'm going to do it, although perhaps wanting to sometimes, but those times perhaps i am not really sensible. When you think about it, it is quite insensible, usually, i was so afraid of death anyway, althought it is now hard to reproduce that choking feeling which i used to have when it dawned on me that i was not immortal p5 and so. I guess I am forced to believe there is an afterlife, because it would be so bleak at the end. I find it hard to believe in it with all my heart( if there are different degrees of belief), I'm sort of like a doubting thomas...show me the wounds.
there is so much to live for anyway. but we do tend to be a little reactionary, especially with those whom we don't really know. we reaxt to those to think of suicide as if we've never thought those thoughts, for life is worht living, yes, in out sensible state of mind. we react against sensibility through rebellion.
well/

I won money on Portugal at -1-1/2...YAY! comfortable 4-0 victory then...still have to make up my losses on Korea, Italy and the england-argentina draw. This adds to the spain-paraguay win...well a little morale booster anyway, although overall, betting hasn't paid for me, and for few others too even...not the best way to make money, but makes it more exciting. Purists argue the game is good enough as it is, well it is, but think ecstacy. Can't wait to play footie tomorrow anyway

My journals tend to be a little introspective. Well, I'm feeling so today anyway. There is much beauty to be beheld in the lone star shining way up high above my window, but I cannot indulge in it. Life is filled with so much minutae, it would seem almost chaotic without any clear vision. I'm not an especially clear-sighted person anyway. Why do I always address someone in my journals? Perhaps it's a need to be listened, without bothering anyone.
Maybe football does help. This holiday filled less with melancholy ennui, and more excitement, stupid or whatever. There are lots of things to be depressed about for a teenager, loneliness, stress, self-esteem, but they all take their root from an uncertain angst about the future. "Happy? If not now, then never." It is possible to be happy and content with what one is now, there shouldn't be any shame in that. But in the enthusiastic eroticism of our youth, we tend to overplay problems too far in the future. "Que Sera Sera." At least that is the philosophy that I try to subscribe to now, a sort of living for the present and immediate future kind of thing. Every methodological approach to life is bound to fail however, for the simple reason that it's complicated. Being content with what I am now leaves me with the possibility tht I am not living up to my full potential(what's my full potential anyway?) Could leave me defeatist to. But I certainly shan't complain, i'm not in a particularly depressed mood. Besides, there are always the more unfortunate, right? How sensible of me. That's why writing is so good. Sometimes it allows you to make things a little simpler than they are in real life, to some maybe gross distortions of the truth. That's because this writing is frankly rather undisciplined, I like to call it rambling, just putting down my thoughts.

I lost my pegasus picture. Well, this computer's been around me for 5 years now, it's antique. Maybe Michelle could help
anyway, if you think I'm too artsy fartsy. hehe (sin^2)x + (cos^2)x = 1. No seriously, I do like sciences, physics, and now maybe mathematics...well I'll write more about me when I'm inspired...going to do maths later anyway to study. Loved geography. After all, I'm a double science student. But remember, science doesn't explain everything. Neither do I, but I'm a better bet. Shorter odds=) Funny how I obsessively try to write everything down now.
Going for lunch. Oh yeah then footie, England vs Argentina... my money's on a draw, what with the odds they're offering...3\1...for a draw or an England win...only 3\2 for Argentina...so probably 10 on england 10 on a draw. they've underestimated them, because this is a totally different match, form goes out of the window. thena again my heart is speaking. but i'm not even a diehard England fan anyway. going to watch it at alex's house. Thierry Henry's sending off last night was a travesty of justice anyway, the Uruguayan players weren't particularly clean. One thing I like about computers is that it's possibly easier to write poetry, you can go back and erase stuff...well hope to do some amateur work, it's hard anyway...i have a lot of trashy antisense poems. maybe I'll put up one...I wrote it in my Maths lecture book. But I'd like to write more metered poems. Sound nicer, and doesn't mean they're less true because they're not modernist.

The act of writing always changes something about your perception of the world...something like the uncertainty principle. Being totally absorbed in writing robs you of your observation of the outside world, while observing too much gives you too much thought, with no visble consequence. Not too bad, but visible consequences are important in today's world. I love Auden anyway, hehe just bought his Collected poems His commentary on The Tempest also deals with the problem for Shakespeare...how to highlight portions of life to make them seem real, yet always ensure that the audience is partly detached. If art and life were one, art would give life no meaning, nor vice-versa. ( I don't think I'm following myself quite too well either=p). It's like what Brecht tried to do, detach the audience, make them think without emotion. But you cannot take away emotion because it is part of life. That's why they cried at Grandmother Courage.

On a totally unrelated note. Auden is so lyrical

Dance, Dance while you can

This is a poem I particularly like. We have to balance our own expectations with the society's. Lately, the individual has become so important, and it is easy to think that. I think of myself as rather self-important too. But I think I may accept the fact that I am part of a society, and I don't really mind doing things like serving in the army, because of duty. Duty, and other words associated negatively with tradition, hidebound tradition etc etc. Well, the power of writing. Listen to this one, read it aloud.

As I Walked Out One Evening (W.H Auden)

As I walked out on evening,
Walking down Bristol Street
The crowds upon the pavement,
Were fields of harvest wheat

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway
"Love has no ending.

"I'll love you dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street

"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages
And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city
began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you
You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day

"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-White Boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back.

"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming
And the deep river ran on.

it's time for G to go home, they have block test next week. so she grabs the pink waterbottle with the stick figure smiling and riding a bike and has grooves as if for the blind from the middle of the bench (not grab, i don't think she grabs things.) turns, gets her bag which has a G on it. walks past. turns halfway to acknowledge you're there, at least make eye contact, cast eyes back down, raises right hand in a futile effort to make a wave, but her fingers curl before her arm is fully extended. she seems to be saying bye although the words don't seem to leave her mouth, though her lips appear to be forming a shape. there a highlight of the day. maybe i'm hallucinating.
12 april 2002

A little writing exercise I did some time ago. How foolish crushes can be. No of course, I'm too strong to have crushes. Roar. She was cute, that's all. Erotic lust. But what is all love but lust. Nah wordplay. The love of a child, the lust for youth and immortality, the love of women, the lust for erotic fulfillment, the love of your neighbour, the lust of self satisfaction. Nothing wrong. No, the description breaks down somewhere, bad. Michelle was very honest about this anyway, I mean the writing exercise. Good on her.

This thing is different from a pen and paper journal in that it posts in an anticlockwise manner! What i meant was probably non-chronological, but if something does anti-clockwise, it goes against the passage of time too right?

A quote from Rimbaud:
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu!

How I miss my French lessons. But yes, they were getting boring at Sec 2...i honestly enjoyed it under Mme Lim...and Mme Pang too, I still remember the embarassing things i said for my French Oral Exam...hehe, no need to say them aloud here. Exhortation of colours and vowels. I like art, but I'm horrible at drawing. I can't do a lot of things, like music. Perhaps writing, but have a long way to go (hehe enforced humility?) My choice of colours shows I'm not very artistic anyway. I'm bad at maths too...but I can improve...spent too much time engaging in "futile" pursuits in secondary school. Good memory, I hope.

Oh, and another quote from my best friend in P3. A song actually. How i learnt the word "fuck"

Don't fuck around
Don't fuck around
Don't fuck around
Don't fuck around with me! (Repeat x2)

Perhaps the details fail me, but I swear it was like that when I remembered it. It has a good moral, though my friend may not have meant it in that context. Don't fuck around. Hear that, dad? Hah, I wank from time to time anyway. But it is probably not as pure as other forms of love. I'm not proud of it anyway. But read any of James Joyce's novels. Yes. Love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart. I'm a forgiving person anyway I hope. Although I lose my temper, rarely. I strike people as rather unambitious anyway. Growing up reasonably comfortable, I'm lucky. Otherwise, grub first, then ethics. I pride myself on patience though. But I occasionally do things that my ideal self wouldn't so, because I'm not perfect. That's no excuse, you have to try to be perfect. But you have to start from knowing what you aren't. See, I even started this journal. How repentant! Confessional.

Yes, today I am probably going to write a lot, because it's always my fascination for new things. This web site thing is great. I lost my pen and paper journal the other day, just a couple of thoughts and writing exercises. I do realise however, that I may be a little impersonal at times, in the sense that I am not writing what I actually feel. i have always found that hard to do. Just some thoughts on journals anyway. My dad commented on a diary of mine when I was 13...it was pretty filled up the first few pages, and then it faded to white nothingness. Lack of time, I said. In a way, nobody writes The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost anymore. Times have changed, yes, and we have modified poetry and such to suit our needs. Perhaps I am not persistent enough. But the real reason I suspect, is that I am uncomfortable with writing, because it lays the foundations of misunderstanding. It is inevitable for all forms of communication, even with oneself! I flinch with embarassment at certain episodes of my life, although I thought I knew perfectly well what I was thinking at that time. Anyway, some thoughts on journals.

If my notebook is to be in order, I must, as it were, step straight out of doors from it - into life- and not have to climb up into the light as if from a cellar or to jump down onto the earth again from a higher level. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher)

I thought, perhaps 17.5 is a rather old age to start chronicling one's thoughts again, considering many friends, mostly female ones however, have kept them for a long time. By a clever twist of irony, I have found so many books recently about people who have started diaries at 17, Plath, Wittgenstein, etc. Perhaps I am not 17 years too late then. O how much I have forgotten by now.

They say good writing hardly needs an introduction. Well, I can never be sure about the quality of my writing, can I? Still, I figured it was time, probably, to start posting some of the random thoughts, sometimes poetic reveries that seize me. They are distracting yes, sometimes beautiful, sometimes I feel I do it much too often. This is in a way to look at what I indulge in, put it aside, and concentrate on the demands of life. There are a million aspiring writers out there, but actually, most people are writers already. They just lust for fame=) Like me. Perhaps perfection isn't that easily attained after all. So I'll try, bit by bit, and we'll see where this goes, if it has to go anywhere at all. How didactic this passage has been. Anyway. (J.S Oeni)