I'm listening to: Katie Melua - Just Like Heaven

Time is practically crawling by. I know I'm going to look back in regret for not appreciating it more, as I probably ought to, but it's so punishingly slow and I'm so sick of routine. Yet this is only the beginning of the end, and there's so much more to get used to missing.

We don't have much room to live.



Daylight licked me into shape;
I must have been asleep for days.
And moving lips to breathe his name,
I opened up my eyes.
And found myself alone, alone,
Alone above a raging sea
That stole the only boy I loved
And drowned him deep inside of me.

I'm listening to: Explosions In The Sky - Your Hand In Mine

The late night has become a familiar friend. The barriers between this current reality and the next/Other seem like they've been diminished somewhat, and existence feels lighter than air. The song, in fact an instrumental, is the vehicle which takes me to another time in another place, on roads paved by the surreal expression of the uncanny hour. A la Offred - where shall I go?

We've lived so many lives and been so many different people. The past is a neverending avenue of regret, pain, confusion, etc., but also that of childhood's genuine happiness, which has since undergone contamination by disillusionment, cynicism and world-weariness. A figment of its former glory, the displaced shadow of what was once happiness is now the chained observer of anything pertaining to an evocation of its former being. Like a prisoner, it occasionally emerges from its cell and fetters, fleetingly, to catch a momentary glimpse of a universe damned to unceasing flux. It can never stay, and it will be sorely missed.

This constant, romantic longing for something of a bygone time as projected onto the obscure future, is perhaps the only thing that keeps one going.




I don't feel like going home now,
I wish that I could stay.

I'm listening to: Ready For The World - Oh Sheila

I've been thinking about this for quite some time now. Here are my ten favourite male and female vocalists!

Brandon Boyd (of Incubus)

John Mayer

Chris Conley (of Saves The Day)

Tony Williams (of The Platters)

Elliott Smith

Emily Haines (of Metric)

Norah Jones

Karen Carpenter (of The Carpenters)

Brody Dalle (of The Distillers)

Katie Melua

I'm listening to: Madeleine Peyroux - Between the Bars

I have to admit, it really is quite pointless trying to rationalize everything, if not merely for the impression of comfort from falling back on a defense mechanism like that, in the face of anything unpleasant. In other words, it really is still pointless. I think I might be on the verge of contradicting myself.

Reason and emotion should go hand in hand, but it's so hard striking a balance. In an attempt to insure myself against the latter and all the liabilities that come along with it, I could very well have overcompensated in engaging too much with the former. I'm not sure exactly how bad that might be, because I think they coexist on a relative rather than an absolute scale where our capacities are expandable.

I may just be tired (from what??), but today's unexpected excursion to Neurotica was somewhat harrowing. I hope I haven't left myself behind in that place. Like my heart's been drained and hung out to dry in the SCORCHING sun, I don't know how much I can believe, right now; my head telling me that there really are certain things I do genuinely care enough about. No, I don't think I ought to care more; I just don't have enough shits to go around.




We'll never find out
Just how much of ourselves we'd left behind,
'Til we turn back in search of an answer.

I'm listening to: Ben Folds Five - Magic

There are so many things I wish I could forget completely, but the experience of psychological pain often leaves an indelible trace - a constant, unwanted reminder that the past doesn't take too kindly to being left behind. There is only one thing I've discovered I can take comfort in.

Each discrete point on any timeline can be considered as a single outcome of a set of interactive forces which shape each situation as the backdrop for any such event. One outcome builds on another, where the preceding influences the following, to culminate in our present state. Keeping in mind that chronology runs on a one directional serial (as opposed to parallel) path in this universe as we know it, our collective past, or who we are today, is like a string of beads.

It's impossible to make lateral comparisons within the same time-frame, since a single string only allows one bead/outcome at any one position along it. On the other hand, the only comparisons we can make are that of outcomes across time, or different beads at different positions along the same string. All other outcomes that could've been simply cease to exist as the movement of time renders them irrelevant to the next set of conditions governing an entirely different (by virtue of the disparity in time) context.

Therefore, since there is no basis for comparison between different outcomes at any one point of time, each outcome is technically the best possible, if a comparative value judgment has to be given; based solely on the fact that there is nothing else to compare it against. Taking this further suggests that each and every of our personal or collective experiences ought to be valued, if not cherished, for what they're worth in themselves; more if we are able to strengthen their meanings by cross-associations with each other or some external entity.

This makes sense, theoretically. If letting reason instead of emotion govern us were only as easy as saying all of this.




you're the magic that holds the sky up from the ground
you're the breath that blows these cool winds 'round

I'm listening to: John Mayer - Not Myself

Suppose I said,
I am on my best behavior
There are times
I lose my worried mind

Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else?

Suppose I said,
Colors change for no good reason
Words will go
From poetry to prose

Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else?

And I, in time, will come around, come around
I always do for you

Suppose I said,
You're my saving grace?

I'm listening to: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion

"The train on this platform goes to Bangladesh. We should be on the other one instead."

"Oh okay, you lead and I'll follow."

They make their way across the uneven grey granite tiles, away from the huge steel doorframes filled with glass, all the way to the corner of the building. There, they exit through a door covered with peeling and discoloured, once-white paint into the top level of an ancient, circular stairwell in the open air, where the mid-afternoon sun emanates a seemingly nebulous glow from its interaction with the zillions of dust particles suspended in the hot air. The wooden railings that line the sides of the stairs are rough and cracked on the surface with the same old paint as the door.

After descending the stairs, amidst the chaotic traffic and exhaust fumes that greet them, they look around expectantly.



I know it makes no sense whatsoever, I'm still trying to figure out what it means, but if you laughed, I know which line made you do that.

It's a little unsettling sometimes when real-life events trigger memories of dream events, especially when they're from so long ago and so trivial that you think you should've forgotten them completely AND they're flashbulb ones. How significant are dreams, really; does anyone really know? I shouldn't be clueless given the research I did on dream interpretation for my paper last year, but I don't have a straight answer either. I don't quite subscribe to Revonsuo's Threat Simulation Theory, but I kinda buy Jung and, to a lesser extent, Freud. I'll probably find out a bit more when I'm very free.

I have a rather useless Teach Yourself: Dream Interpretation book that I bought for research sitting in front of me right now. Bleargh, it's so ironic.



On the way home, this car hears my confessions;
I think tonight I'll take the long way.

I'm listening to: Curvise - The Game of Who Needs Who the Worst

It feels so incredibly surreal, like how candyfloss melts in the mouth - to Nothingness. One secretly waits to be awakened any second now, but even more deeply knows it isn't going to happen. One feels trapped in a lucid dream within which control's lost and things are rapidly spiralling out of hand. The passing of time aligns itself with the rhythm of an engine's mechanical purr; its constant but intangible presence weighing down like rusted iron chains on one's aching shoulders. A seam in the universal fabric of Being splits and runs.

One reluctantly turns, in dread and horror, to face a splintering of realities.

I'm listening to: Belinda Carlisle - Summer Rain

When the exams are over, I will:

• Download and watch season 2 of True Blood.
• Go cycling at ECP.
• Find Roald Dahl's Skin and The Umbrella Man collections.
• Cook tomato soup, french onion soup and mushroom soup.
• Bake pretty cupcakes for nice people.
• Embark on an adventure (i.e. go somewhere new).
• Sleepover =)
• Watch Becoming Jane again.
• Go dancing!
• Play The Sims.
• Make more mix-tapes.
• Mail Delly.
• GO TO THE BEACH.
• Watch the sunrise/sunset.

This list is not exhaustive.

I'm listening to: Santana and Alex Band - Why Don't You and I

Something's missing.

If I could, then I would.

Tell me who you are.

Are you absolutely certain you want to do that?

I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

I think I understand what you mean.

Do you need one too?

I might hate you.

They really shouldn't be that way, you know.

No answer on the telephone.

Bullshit.

I am neither, and both.

Life leaks from your fingertips.

Ours is the stormy kind of love.

Sweet amber, how sweet are you?

Yes, I still like it.

I've got a splinter in my thumb.

Sometimes, I do that too.

Honestly, no.

You got that hair slicked back and those wayfarers on, baby.

Listen to yourself!

Don't worry, things'll eventually work themselves out.

Can't get off, of the train.

I see the hospital, nurse the shoreline like a wound.

Okay.

Get lost.

You can throw it in the laundry.

Wait here while I try to find the exit sign.

Invasion's so succexy.