"Half of what I say is meaningless
But I say it just to reach you Julia"
Just helped to clear out my mom's place today. One last look at #03-16, and 11 years of eye-treatment. It goes in cycles of 11 years, 82-93 at Orchard Plaza, and 93-04 at Lucky Plaza. There goes dusty lenses, cardboard boxes of saline, a ladder and other concomitant rubbish.
Won't have excuses to eat River Valley Nasi Lemak and probably I'll only ever visit Lucky Plaza again rarely for pool at Mambo or something. Okay.
7/30/2004
7/29/2004
Motor Cars, Handle Bars
Bicycles for Two
Broken Hearted Jubilee
Parachutes, Army Boots
Sleeping Bags for Two
Sentimental Jamboree
Buy Buy
Says the Sign in the Shop Window
Why Why
Says the Junk the Yard
Candlesticks, Building Bricks
Something Old and New
Memories for You and Me
Buy Buy
Says the Sign in the Shop Window
Why Why
Says the Junk in the Yard
That's Junk, by the Beatles. Before I come to that.
My cousin is in love. It's the only thing that could have gotten me to damn write on this blog again. It's not the most shocking, nor the most significant thing that could have happened in all this time. But it created a certain mood, a 'sentimental jamboree' if you would.
I guess it was an effusive sort of ebullience, wrought by the sheer happiness of someone else. Usually when other people are too happy, it sort of scares you, or even makes you feel sick and jealous, but I guess this was someone I knew, and there was a sense of sincerity of emotion associated with all of it.
Joy, tempered by tinges of anxiety and fear. When it happens to someone else, I guess unabashedly it's so much easier to comment about it, no guilt about self-indulgence or self-pity and it was just so uplifting to hear the words of someone who well believes in what they say.
About how she was so sure yet unsure about the whole thing. The quiet self assurance, knowing that yes, it was probably her he liked more of the two, but even then, would you take the risk? The meeting. The anxieties about the future yet foretold. And yes the anxieties about being continents apart, about being of a different social class, about not being good enough, and about how lucky god made her feel.
In the context of me having a stiff neck and a bad past couple of days, in the context of my previously loudmouthed in private yet really pretty quiet in public cousin, and the serendipity and unexpectedness of the whoel situation.
So much food for thought. Do people actually do worry about being from the same social class? Hmm yes of course, this world and generation is still quite conservative, especially for Indonesian Chinese. Of course, its a different world, and one could really break free of conventions and everything for love but a great deal many people actually factor in their parents thoughts and considerations in everything and watching them juggle all these potentially stressful thoughts in the midst of what must be happiness, its just like watching something you could believe in. The worst fears haven't happened, and do pray that they won't.
It's like watching what could be my future. Stop, look around, and think again. Why then, Junk?
it just made me feel so optimistic and rosy about the hazy thing called love again. I'm no emotional wreck, or sentimental fob, I guess, no matter how much sad songs and films try to convince me otherwise. Deep down, I am perhaps a legitimate, clear thinker, with a tendency to cling to childish habits to think that I somehow am sublimate from this world from time to time with certain special traits in this ethereal one. Yet I know, with much certainty, that many people feel much more than I do or reason better than I do.
With this tricky thing called mortality, and the vagueness of an afterlife(in these days at least), we're all compelled to make the best we can of this life, improve ourselves, for our sakes, for our loves ones, as we grow up, start to be repsonsible, earn enough money, make little gestures of kindness. If we didn't already do these things in childhood on a consistent enough basis, the rigour of adult, mature thinking will ensure you do.
That's my future. I guess I want to be a dependable guy and everything. I also want to be the quasi-enigmatic silent rebel who smokes marijuana and cigarettes from time to time, doesn't drink, and doesn't really enjoy loud social pursuits and maybe can write a book or two. Be moderately successful and vote Socialist. And practise these little beliefs in real life.
And it's Junk. I'm enamoured with little histories, simply because they present themselves in nice completed versions for you to tell stories with. Photos, stories, letters of commemoration. Even doing little commemorative efforts for things like NDP and school. It doesn't damn matter sometimes, who reads this shit, and all the photos are the same when you look at them too many times. But it's the first time you read. That's when you get bashed over the head, like the SARS coffee table book (what irony, we can drink coffee now) which is really a good commemorative efforts. At least save it from floating away into the ocean and being caught in a fishing rod of a boy on the other side of the world.
It's Junk. It's reality. It's not knowing whether the girl I love will ever know why Elia Kazan fell out with Arthur Miller over Marilyn Monroe, not knowing if my attempts at understanding will ever penetrate the myths, songs and stories she heard as a child, in some foreign family. It's the happiness of obscurity and the acceptance of insecurity, which as an individual, one can never tolerate. It is the individual which expects perfection of itself.
It's packaging. Not slick hair or nice clothes packaging. Bubble wrap or cardboard? I like bubble wrap because I love hearing the sound being popped and if I give that much joy to people, it's good. It's slightly bad for the environment and it hurts to be popped.
Buy, buy. I could turn this into a relentless tirade against capitalism but I know it's sensible.
Why why, why try ask the Junk? You never have to do anything or buy anything again. You could fashion a life out of all the junk you have here. But it'll never be enough for you. Or at least, I want to have more junk when i'm 85.
Bicycles for Two
Broken Hearted Jubilee
Parachutes, Army Boots
Sleeping Bags for Two
Sentimental Jamboree
Buy Buy
Says the Sign in the Shop Window
Why Why
Says the Junk the Yard
Candlesticks, Building Bricks
Something Old and New
Memories for You and Me
Buy Buy
Says the Sign in the Shop Window
Why Why
Says the Junk in the Yard
That's Junk, by the Beatles. Before I come to that.
My cousin is in love. It's the only thing that could have gotten me to damn write on this blog again. It's not the most shocking, nor the most significant thing that could have happened in all this time. But it created a certain mood, a 'sentimental jamboree' if you would.
I guess it was an effusive sort of ebullience, wrought by the sheer happiness of someone else. Usually when other people are too happy, it sort of scares you, or even makes you feel sick and jealous, but I guess this was someone I knew, and there was a sense of sincerity of emotion associated with all of it.
Joy, tempered by tinges of anxiety and fear. When it happens to someone else, I guess unabashedly it's so much easier to comment about it, no guilt about self-indulgence or self-pity and it was just so uplifting to hear the words of someone who well believes in what they say.
About how she was so sure yet unsure about the whole thing. The quiet self assurance, knowing that yes, it was probably her he liked more of the two, but even then, would you take the risk? The meeting. The anxieties about the future yet foretold. And yes the anxieties about being continents apart, about being of a different social class, about not being good enough, and about how lucky god made her feel.
In the context of me having a stiff neck and a bad past couple of days, in the context of my previously loudmouthed in private yet really pretty quiet in public cousin, and the serendipity and unexpectedness of the whoel situation.
So much food for thought. Do people actually do worry about being from the same social class? Hmm yes of course, this world and generation is still quite conservative, especially for Indonesian Chinese. Of course, its a different world, and one could really break free of conventions and everything for love but a great deal many people actually factor in their parents thoughts and considerations in everything and watching them juggle all these potentially stressful thoughts in the midst of what must be happiness, its just like watching something you could believe in. The worst fears haven't happened, and do pray that they won't.
It's like watching what could be my future. Stop, look around, and think again. Why then, Junk?
it just made me feel so optimistic and rosy about the hazy thing called love again. I'm no emotional wreck, or sentimental fob, I guess, no matter how much sad songs and films try to convince me otherwise. Deep down, I am perhaps a legitimate, clear thinker, with a tendency to cling to childish habits to think that I somehow am sublimate from this world from time to time with certain special traits in this ethereal one. Yet I know, with much certainty, that many people feel much more than I do or reason better than I do.
With this tricky thing called mortality, and the vagueness of an afterlife(in these days at least), we're all compelled to make the best we can of this life, improve ourselves, for our sakes, for our loves ones, as we grow up, start to be repsonsible, earn enough money, make little gestures of kindness. If we didn't already do these things in childhood on a consistent enough basis, the rigour of adult, mature thinking will ensure you do.
That's my future. I guess I want to be a dependable guy and everything. I also want to be the quasi-enigmatic silent rebel who smokes marijuana and cigarettes from time to time, doesn't drink, and doesn't really enjoy loud social pursuits and maybe can write a book or two. Be moderately successful and vote Socialist. And practise these little beliefs in real life.
And it's Junk. I'm enamoured with little histories, simply because they present themselves in nice completed versions for you to tell stories with. Photos, stories, letters of commemoration. Even doing little commemorative efforts for things like NDP and school. It doesn't damn matter sometimes, who reads this shit, and all the photos are the same when you look at them too many times. But it's the first time you read. That's when you get bashed over the head, like the SARS coffee table book (what irony, we can drink coffee now) which is really a good commemorative efforts. At least save it from floating away into the ocean and being caught in a fishing rod of a boy on the other side of the world.
It's Junk. It's reality. It's not knowing whether the girl I love will ever know why Elia Kazan fell out with Arthur Miller over Marilyn Monroe, not knowing if my attempts at understanding will ever penetrate the myths, songs and stories she heard as a child, in some foreign family. It's the happiness of obscurity and the acceptance of insecurity, which as an individual, one can never tolerate. It is the individual which expects perfection of itself.
It's packaging. Not slick hair or nice clothes packaging. Bubble wrap or cardboard? I like bubble wrap because I love hearing the sound being popped and if I give that much joy to people, it's good. It's slightly bad for the environment and it hurts to be popped.
Buy, buy. I could turn this into a relentless tirade against capitalism but I know it's sensible.
Why why, why try ask the Junk? You never have to do anything or buy anything again. You could fashion a life out of all the junk you have here. But it'll never be enough for you. Or at least, I want to have more junk when i'm 85.
7/27/2004
Frustration is one of the hardest qualities to put onto paper. For melancholy, you have a palette of greys and blues, rainy skies, jealousy's green, passion red, purity white, happiness a mix of oranges and yellows.
Frustration is the paper with your tiny handwriting crumpled and thrown into the paper bin.
Frustration is the paper with your tiny handwriting crumpled and thrown into the paper bin.
7/22/2004
Nothing much to contribute today. Just a nice afterword by Camus, on his own work, "L'Etranger". Listen to the argument and see if you agree.
A long time ago, I summed up L'Etranger in a sentence which I realize is extremely paradoxical: 'In our society, any man who doesn't cry at his mother's funeral is liable to be condemned to death.' I simply meant that the hero of this book is condemned because he doesn't play the game. In this sense, he is an outsider to the society in which he lives, wandering on the fringe, on the outskirts of life, solitary and sensual. And for that reason, some readers have been tempted to regard him as a reject. But to get a more accurate picture of his character, or rather one which conforms more closely to the author's intentions, you must ask yourself in what way Meursault doesn't play the game. The answer is simple: he refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler. But, contrary to appearances, Meursault doesn't want to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened. For example, he is asked to say that he regrest his crime, in time-honoured fashion. He replies that he feels more annoyance about it than true regret. And it is this nuance that condemns him.
So for me Meursault is not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in love with a sun that leaves no shadows. Far from lacking in all sensibility, he is driven by a tenacious and therefore profound possion, the passion for an absolute and for truth. This truth is as yet a negative one, a truth born of living and feeling, but without which no triumph over the self or over the world will ever be possible.
So one wouldn't be far wrong in seeing L'Etranger as the story of a man, without any heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth. I also once said, and again paradoxically, that I tried to make my character represent the only Christ we deserve. It will be understood, after these explanations, that I said it without any intention of blasphemy but simply with the somewhat ironic affection that an artist has a right to feel towards the characters he created."
Spoken like a true goalkeeper. Yes. Veritas. What is truth?
A long time ago, I summed up L'Etranger in a sentence which I realize is extremely paradoxical: 'In our society, any man who doesn't cry at his mother's funeral is liable to be condemned to death.' I simply meant that the hero of this book is condemned because he doesn't play the game. In this sense, he is an outsider to the society in which he lives, wandering on the fringe, on the outskirts of life, solitary and sensual. And for that reason, some readers have been tempted to regard him as a reject. But to get a more accurate picture of his character, or rather one which conforms more closely to the author's intentions, you must ask yourself in what way Meursault doesn't play the game. The answer is simple: he refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler. But, contrary to appearances, Meursault doesn't want to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened. For example, he is asked to say that he regrest his crime, in time-honoured fashion. He replies that he feels more annoyance about it than true regret. And it is this nuance that condemns him.
So for me Meursault is not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in love with a sun that leaves no shadows. Far from lacking in all sensibility, he is driven by a tenacious and therefore profound possion, the passion for an absolute and for truth. This truth is as yet a negative one, a truth born of living and feeling, but without which no triumph over the self or over the world will ever be possible.
So one wouldn't be far wrong in seeing L'Etranger as the story of a man, without any heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth. I also once said, and again paradoxically, that I tried to make my character represent the only Christ we deserve. It will be understood, after these explanations, that I said it without any intention of blasphemy but simply with the somewhat ironic affection that an artist has a right to feel towards the characters he created."
Spoken like a true goalkeeper. Yes. Veritas. What is truth?
7/02/2004
"High on diesel and gasoline,
psycho for drum machine
shaking their bits to the hits,
Drag acts, drug acts, suicides,
in your dad's suits you hide
staining his name again,
Cracked up, stacked up, 22,
psycho for sex and glue
lost it to Bostik, yeah,
Shaved heads, rave heads, on the pill,
got too much time to kill
get into bands and gangs,
Oh, here they come, the beautiful ones, the beautiful ones"
- Suede
lalalalala. what if i don't like you because you're so excessively happy & deliriously mad! we should all be completely rational and sit down and talk about it like grown men do, only then will you know all the love i have for you.
break my heart baby like the little glass cherry from the ornamental shelf in the monumental room.
and while you're at it baby just scream at everybody and drift your brain away to some blue lagoon.
psycho for drum machine
shaking their bits to the hits,
Drag acts, drug acts, suicides,
in your dad's suits you hide
staining his name again,
Cracked up, stacked up, 22,
psycho for sex and glue
lost it to Bostik, yeah,
Shaved heads, rave heads, on the pill,
got too much time to kill
get into bands and gangs,
Oh, here they come, the beautiful ones, the beautiful ones"
- Suede
lalalalala. what if i don't like you because you're so excessively happy & deliriously mad! we should all be completely rational and sit down and talk about it like grown men do, only then will you know all the love i have for you.
break my heart baby like the little glass cherry from the ornamental shelf in the monumental room.
and while you're at it baby just scream at everybody and drift your brain away to some blue lagoon.
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