I'm listening to: Yellowcard - Firewater

Haha, oh look, it's exactly 12.51.

This has been one of my favourite songs for about half a decade, and I doubt it'll ever get old. I'm still grateful to the person who sent me this song, and many other great ones. I don't think I could forget you, and I don't want to.

It's something I'd decided quite a long time back; that you can't really miss a person. People are changing all the time and it's amazing what even a couple of days can do, so the person you used to know has inevitably perished, in a metaphysical sense. That guy whose name I can't remember (I'm quite embarrassed) said you never step in the same river twice; and likewise, you never meet the same person twice.

I think what people really miss when they reminisce about the past is the state of things at a certain point in time. Artfully balanced dynamics at an opportune moment, like a heavily luxuriant blossom in spring, lasts only for the season. To preserve it artificially in its entirety defeats the very nature of its being, though it does lend to fossilizing in the crevasses of memory and leaving such minimal traces. 'To have and to hold' never quite stays the same.

All this, sadly, suggests that longing may be a lot less personal. And I'm hoping it doesn't simply come across as plain cynicism because I hadn't the intent.




You sat me down beside myself
To show me all the reasons I was wrong for you
Was this for real? It's hard to tell
'Cause it was such a beautiful mess we had got into

I'm listening to: Brand New - The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows

I've been listening to plenty of heartbreak songs; this one by Brand New amongst others like the more mainstream Daughtry's No Surprise. I'm not sure what exactly's drawn me, but I made a somewhat startling revelation after immersing myself in all that mass-consumerist sorrow.

I noticed that amidst the intense pain and sadness, there was a sense of closure - the bitter end to a chapter in one's life, but an end nonetheless. With the setting of such parameters, it scaffolds the foundation for healing towards completeness of the self, or at least to a state as complete as it ever was prior to all the events that transpired. Having gone the distance, maybe it isn't that epically disastrous.

Should beauty and happiness not be found in the journey rather than the destination? And why should these entities by bound by linear and single-directional concepts of time; could they not mean as much despite having been experienced in the past? The mind may forget but I believe the heart never does.

Owner of a Lonely Heart by Yes goes,

Owner of a lonely heart,
Much better than a
Owner of a broken heart.

But I think it's a little short-sighted. Who's to say that longing doesn't tear at the heart as much as loss does? And regret for letting opportunities slip may become a neverending, labyrinthine nightmare. I'm not at all saying that brokenness is better than loneliness, but that even in practical aspects the latter should not be a clearly more desirable option. However, the former is a route often taken by the thoughtless, and to deliberately, wholeheartedly and wholemindedly tread the same path would easily feel counter-intuitive.

I believe everything I've said but because of that I really can't be sure that it translates into practice.

On a separate note, my heart is again weighted with yet another burden that, though small, burns sharp like hot coals. The discomfort is acute but transient - it comes and goes in waves. This time however, I know exactly what it is and what I'm going to do about it. It will be an arduous test of my patience and I'll hang on as long as I possibly can. But I'm open to changing my mind.




We saw the western coast
I saw the hospital
Nursed the shoreline like a wound
Reports of lover's tryst
Were neither clear nor descript
We kept it safe and slow
The quiet things that no one ever knows

So keep the blood in your head
And keep your feet on the ground
If today's the day it gets tired
Today's the day we drop out
Gave up my body and bed
All for an empty hotel
Wasting words on lower cases and capitals

I'm listening to: Thunder - Love Walked In

I woke up at 7.45 this morning after sleeping for less than 3 hours. It's such a pain. Oddly though, I'm not actually that tired.

I love being out in the middle of the night. It almost feels like the world's momentarily stopped with everything and everyone else and by some twist of fate you're the only ones not frozen in time as well. Nighttime becomes a Polaroid photograph open to closer observation and it's so difficult not to admire the beauty of dusk with its vague outlines and unusually long silences, under an inky velvet sky studded with the nebulous glow of an occasional star/planet. We become an accidental tourist to a single facet of the universe as we know it, and under such circumstances are able to comprehend it fully by actively employing different faculties of mind to engage with it.

Assimilated into that greater web but without being caught in the social fabric, we find ourselves in harmony with the patterns of the universe; and like a ripple in water, the breadth of our human experience broadens laterally to encompass more without us getting sucked in deeper beyond the moment. This delicate state is always broken far too easily, but it will readily return every so often as if in anticipation of our participating in it. Like a living creature.




Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train.
Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer,
Beating like a hammer.

I'm listening to: Sugarcult - Memory

After being away even for such a short while, I'm so glad to be home. My head and heart are in line again and I've returned with new clarity - or have the intricacies been obscured by an subconscious decision to ignore and forget? It doesn't matter either way.

It's frightening how quickly things can spiral out of control beneath immediate consciousness, where the only indication is when we get a sense of things bubbling under and threatening to burst out and devastate everything; that something isn't right, and we can only try to cushion the impact when it finally strikes. I don't often work that way, thank goodness. But when it does happen it's a sobering reminder of the mind as a partitioned entity which we don't often, if at all, have complete, deliberate control over.

Its spectre still haunts me and I wonder if it'll ever stop, but I can live with it. It's never been overwhelmingly difficult to come to terms with myself because if I can't, how could I expect anyone else to? The problem was in excavating the elusive heart of the matter.




This may never start,
We could fall apart
And I'd be your memory.

I'm listening to: Finch - Letters to You (acoustic)

This will come to pass.

I have to believe it.

I'm listening to: The Strokes - Last Night

Apocalypses are so often portrayed with such epic grandiosity, but it'll never get old because the possibility of its conception perpetually gnaws at the human imagination. Perhaps it spawns from some collective guilt as in the Jungian collective consciousness, that we're driven to dwell on the very thing that terrifies us the most: the complete destruction of everything that defines contemporary civilization which we've long assimilated into our characterization of humanity. That which is the basis of such fear may be inaccurate - can humanity in its most essential form evolve simultaneously with its 'phenotypical' developments? Apocalyptic terror may therefore be unfounded.

We might just be feeding the monster that is our awareness of human frailty, to put off upfront acknowledgment which would probably culminate in direct confrontation between that and our great pride; a bloody battle within the coliseum of our psyche. Satiating our thirst for harmony in a partial coming to terms between various warring factions of the mind makes sense, to me at least. By "partial coming to terms" I mean something like Revonsuo's Threat Simulation Theory of dreams, that is, simulating the end of the world so we have somewhat experienced it in a safer kind of proxy where we get the moral of the story without the devastating costs. Also calling to mind the rebirth of hope and faith, its moral lessons are the balancers which pull our thoughts and actions in the right direction. I hope I actually make sense. I'm so sleepy but I had to get something out.

On a separate note, I had a REALLY lovely day. Thanks for sharing it with me =)

I'm listening to: The Beatles - Twist and Shout

I'd finished watching season two of True Blood since yesterday. I didn't care much for the bits with the annoying maenad and psychotic religious fanatics, but I still like it as a whole. Jessica and Hoyt are so sweet, and I really love Godric's character. But who wouldn't? A Gandhi of the vampires AND he's incredibly charming; a killer combination - no wonder he had to die after appearing in just three episodes. Even for fiction, maybe he's just too good to be true.

True Blood just puts Twilight to shame. It came nowhere near trying to cover everything with a saccharine candy shell so it was gritty and plain nasty sometimes because of the way it portrayed human nature. So bloody disgusting and realistic beyond (obviously) the immediate subject matter, the awful aftertaste it left lingering was from the realization that our world comes close to being as messed up and we don't even need vampires to do that. Yet amidst the horror (not to be confused with terror), there's still some room for love, beauty and redemption every now and then like little pieces sandwiched in between.

I can't hardly wait for season three =)





When you came in, the air went out
And every shadow filled up with doubt.