Imagined Mouthpieces

Burying one's darkest thoughts in cyberspace is the ultimate irony.
After you click that "publish" button, the words are released into this massive and nearly meaningless infinity, for the viewing of random eyes and whatnot.
In the end, it's just like contributing more junk to landfill, feeding more drivel into the chaos of information overload that has completely taken over our lives.
If you have a strong grasp of what reality is, does the internet and your activities therein figure largely within that perception of your existence?
How much cyberspace do you own, and does it really belong to you?

Lumps in my chest

Let’s say this is a sort of monologue but also a letter to my mother, and probably also my father.

2010 sort of ended with a health check-up in November. Ultrasound scanning your breasts instead of the agonising squishing through a mammogram was kind of a relief, but not the results: 2 rather large 2 cm wide lumps fused together in the right side. And who knew that a biopsy meant sticking a needle into your body and chopping up cells with the needlepoint to harvest them?

I don't have cancer.

It's just 2 lumps, cysts, fibroids, whatever they are. They are just there.

The most stress came from the maternal freak-out which led to the whole desperate rush to the breast doctor and then the TCM doctor, just a day before leaving The Stewing Pot that is the home country. Or should I call it The Pressure Cooker?

It was hard enough keeping the doctors' sessions a private affair. Isn't the medical consultation a matter of confidence between 2 persons, the doctor and the patient? I am no longer underage, nearly ten times the age of three, and surely I can make up my own mind about my own body without an overly anxious elder hovering around over my shoulder.

Are you going to insist on accompanying me into the gynecologist’s room to stare up my vagina too? And get all pissed off when I refuse? I am not going to let you invade my privacy anymore, and you have to let go of this need to control my life, just as I have to let go of my festering anger towards you that I can never tell you about.

I have a warped attitude towards all figures of authority, and that probably boils down to the issues I have with my parents, hey? So much baggage, so much damage…

 Of course, the TCM doc's diagnosis about emotional issues and the resultant problems it might cause in the body was creepily on the dot, and again, it came down to keeping the depression a secret from the folks.
And that whole conversation about how emotional instability could easily be a hereditary thing, well that’s intriguing speculation, probably also easily proven with research, but don’t tell the mother. I have no problems with admitting that I am nuts, but she isn’t that open-minded. 

I could try jokingly yelling it to her sometime, just to let off steam.

Now the thing is, I am turning into her, and by God, I want to do everything I can to avoid that. It’s funny how the actual geographical and physical distance facilitates this clearer perspective on the whole situation I have had with her all my life.

I was a sick child. A weak, constantly ill, eventually asthmatic, accident-prone, in-and-out-of-hospital every few years, often struck by coughs and colds and sore throats and fevers sort of kid. Yes, I began my life as an unhealthy, weak, sorry little ass who was constantly in need of care and attention, and my mother’s reaction was to turn into the model helicopter parent.

My mother’s love was an over-anxious, obsessively protective, fear-ridden perpetual panic attack that kept all the chocolate and ice cream out of my childhood consciousness until I was in my early teens, which was a miracle in itself considering the hedonistic 80s and 90s.

Trauma begets trauma, doesn’t it? Could she be suffering some form of depression as well? Would this ever get out into the open or will it always be shuttered in the closet, since that seems to be the family policy about emotional problems and such?

Here I am, on the cusp of marriage, a rather late bloomer, probably going to be an over-age mother, thinking about the relationship I have with my own mother, and not really feeling the sort of warm and heart-string-tugging positive vibes that I should be feeling.

I have a great amount of anger, frustration, and irrational guilt repressed within when I think of my parents, that I know for sure. I do not know how to deal with it, and I am so glad that I am not near enough physically to expose this horrible rage accidentally. The distance is a relief, because you stress me out, and if I was on the wrong drugs I might even kill you without meaning to. Thank God I am not.

It seems my panic attack is to waste the prime of my life striving for and failing to achieve any success in whatever endeavor I put effort into. Then the nightmare leading up to the so-called mid-life crisis: languishing in the no-man’s land of mundane mediocrity, letting foolish material pursuits take over your life, meaningless corporate-ladder climbing, politicking in a world where the boss’s decision, the bottom-line and profit margins reign supreme, and then crashing at fifty or so, seriously sick, obscenely overweight, completely burnt out. 

Well. Not that I want to live that long anyway.
 
When I think of returning home for good, I dread the constant pressure that they will exert upon me to live according to how they perceive my life should be. That was one of the major reasons why I was so desperately craving escape from Singapore, despite my embarking on a committed romantic relationship with my now-fiancé. I felt that I needed to get away, as far away as I could, and so I decided to make the move to Melbourne.
 
I hope you realize by now that I knew I had to follow my guts and fulfill my dreams, in case I died before I hit thirty, which happens to be an ominous dream I had. (I dreamt that I would die at 25, in which case I have outlived that omen by 5 years already, and could be living on borrowed time.)
 
Considering that you always talk about dying and leaving us to fend for ourselves, or threatening to die so that we would learn how valuable you were to us, I guess I get that inclination for morbidity from you as well.
 
I also needed to figure myself out without any external influence, without having to face the pressure of living up to your dual expectations. Yes, I know my younger brother is better off, seems more independent, has achieved success earlier, earns more, has his head on his shoulders, and seems to know where he’s going in life. But does he, really? Or is he living out your expectations too?
 
What the fuck is so called ‘success’ and ‘happiness’ anyway?
 
I probably will never know until we stop comparing ourselves to others, especially within the same family. Are we too stupid to learn that nothing good comes out of it, only negative vibes and shit judgements that destroy the very spirit of unconditional love and support that a family should have together? Not that these bonds are very strong in the first place anyway. 
 
So why is my mother so seriously unhappy with her life, and why can’t she deal with it better? Why can’t she just let go of all the bad and feel the benefits of all the good?
 
Ha. I should ask those same questions to myself. 

I know how desperately I need to fix myself before I can do anything with my life.
 
Maybe it’s all part of being flawed and human, to lose sight of the blessings in your life and obsess over the pain, suffering, and tragedy. Maybe it’s part of our make-up to be melodramatic and self-pitying. Pathetic mom leads to pathetic child? Oh fuck.
 
Will we ever learn to let go of these burdens that are quite literally manifesting as lumps in our bodies?

...

remember the day i was gone...

but first the memories

of how you played in the sun
slowly building some fortress from sand
cupping with naive hands what could have been invincible
and then the waves came, and brought it all away
how delightful was this laughter in destruction
rising like the tide of love in my chest

my heart would have withstood barbarian hordes to preserve your joy

remember the time i stood by you
grasping your shaking form with silent faith
believing in no less than your penultimate triumph
joining in the chorus of your screaming euphoria
how sharp was that gleam of knowledge in your eyes
that none had the power to wrestle that moment from your mind

my heart was swollen, drunk on pride, senseless with vicarious victory

now, mourning transient happiness, passing with such haste...

remember the time you cleaned, packed, and left

and did not need me

time came and went and washed out my heart

leaving a hollow echo of wandering questions about you unanswered

remember the day I faded and vanished

but you did not notice

remember the day I was gone?

RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT

by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars."

The lamp said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

Re: REMEMBERING FIREWORKS

REMEMBERING FIREWORKS

Always as if for the first time, we watch
the fireworks as if no-one had ever
done this before, made shapes, signs
cut diamonds on air, sent up stars
nameless, imperious. And in the falling
of fire, the spent rocket, there is a kind
of nostalgia, as normally only attaches
to things long known and lost. Such an absence
such emptiness of sky the fireworks leave
after their festival. We, fumbling
for words of love, remember the rockets
the spinning wheels, the sudden diamonds
and say with delight “Yes, like that, like that”
Oh and the air is full of falling
stars surrendered. We search for a sign.

Elizabeth Jennings
.
.
.
.
.
.

NEW YEAR’S EVE 2009: FIN

With good omen, there was the downpour.

“Ah but all this water is a symbol of prosperity to come,” we joked.

Cold, wet, gently mocking

The rhythms of nature rebukes these revellers in vain

There is no cure for the mania of youth.

Drums, frantic beats, writhing limbs, pumping muscles, sweat mixed with rain, and fervour, so much anticipation, to mark the passing of time.

The roar of the countdown sends waves of echoing shrieks from this mob so hungry,

So hungry for a climax

It began, the soaring spinning whirling spiralling explosions of light and colour, set off from great heights, so dazzling in the darkened stormy skies, greeted with approving cheers and such heated enthusiasm

Perhaps the damp would vaporise from my soggy clothes

And thousands of cameras, risking the wet, captured thousands more shots of such ephemeral moments, memories living now, dying now.

As the dawn slides into consciousness, inexorably, always, as, with all the certainty of existence, the time will pass and

Eat us all, remember that we will forget.

Always. We forget all the madness and euphoria, the joy, pain, sorrow, pleasure, punishment, all the suffering and the sweetness, and

that tender grinding ache

that life is.

walls of fear collapse inwards

memories or half-truths in the mind bring forth the most torment

i used to be an excellent student, was i not?

one of those typical over-achievers, top 10% individuals in the population, just getting by without being prodigious, yet within the 'special' stream

i curse that system now, wish it could have damaged less, constructed more, because now I have nothing left to salvage, for all my pathetic learning has given me nothing, no joy, no satisfaction, only the knowing that there will always be that grinding defeat of judgement from elders and peers who can never accept nor understand.

and still i ask why.

why do I build these walls of self-pity, of horrifying doubts, fears, neurosis and paralysing paranoia, when now so many windows of opportunity appear to open of their own accord?

why can I not move my hideous body, force my hideous face to express appreciation and happiness at the gifts and blessings heaped upon my head?

why this sorrow? this overwhelming lethargy, this dead weight that is the irony of living, the hollow fullness of rotting burden, mutating, expanding, consuming, trapped in my core, eating its way outwards...

i am trapped in myself, my disgusting form, this disgusting life, and all the guilt and regret and pressures from everywhere could simply crush me into shit, and who will care?

at least as shit one could fertilise the growth of beautiful things, of living things that seem to bear more purpose being alive.

this is not failure, not quite, or i am in denial, refusing to confess or admit my weakness...yet it is defeat.

my struggle grows every new day into the demon who is eating my heart alive, burying my willpower, my spirit, my motivations and desires to create, in nothing, nothing more than a television screen.

and i will sit, inanimate, and watch these globalised sorrows play out in the small box, just as mine boil and bubble, roll and grind, in the walls of my flesh.

let me lie still and forget...who will purge this decay from me?

deep end

i feel
though I also think
and cannot stop the flood
it is
suffocation
realising with perverse glee that
madness is power
the impending mania defies any fear
yet this fear is the key
and the mind the door which enters into
drowning
multiples in orgy
the selves fall apart and laugh at each other
sensations of exquisite despair bizarre sorrow hysteria joy murderous fury
asphyxiation
delicately thread the line which strangles
vertigo vision
it is too easy to let the self be destroyed in this quest for the questionable
and then swallowed darkness expands
infinitely, and the falling
should end
maybe

Blindness, Plans. Objectives, Aimlessness, Foresight

1.
i don't know, esteemed one, i don't know. the vision grows dimmer as the future darkens.
in objects of beauty we create, we invest our doomed affections, even as we die every day.
you said love will die as the body starves, that necessity triumphs over passion;
perhaps those already jaded with these games of hunger and power cannot love at all.
sometimes i see that bleak weariness glaze over the cheer in your eyes,
and i fear that same despair - that same monster that leers over each of us in waking nightmares
like some cancer, a parasite that consumes spirit and makes hollow shells of men.
how hollow can one become before completely crumbling into shards of uselessness?

2.
if i promise you, beloved one, if i promise you, yet wish to break all these chains that bind me here, as i would yearn for the recurring escape to pastures beyond -
will you be blinded by bitterness, hatred of my fallacy?
perhaps your love would lead to forgiveness, but
then i would deserve a lifetime of guilt and regret, to have hurt you beyond all the boundaries of patience, trust, understanding, support, and all the love you gave me
trampled upon by my awkward, over-reaching ambitions and wasted, like my youth, and yours.

FEAR: Futurist Existential Anxiety Reflexes

As the world slides ever so predictably into a recession cycle, what with superpowers swapping thrones (the US will probably have to concede to China fairly soon, most factors considered, especially with all the war-mongering and military involvement in the Middle East not looking at all optimistic, i.e. no end in sight, they cannot exterminate the terrorist pest infestations, have to keep babysitting immature unstable newborn democratic governments, despair despair); the questions raised based on sex and race on the political front reflect true chaos occurring in this post-postmodern era. Even as perceptions are deeply challenged by the possibility of either America's first black president or first female vice-president, so are well-hidden (as in classic unspoken truths - "you just can't handle the truth if it came straight out") racial and sexist prejudices brought to the surface, making one wonder if either option would make the world any better a place. The most powerful person in the world has become quite ridiculed and powerless within this last decade, and beyond the year-end elections there is a disturbing blank - how is the world going to survive with so much chaos at play? Even if there are patterns in place, no solutions can be found within them...can we as a human race even see how we are going to survive the next decade?

Pessimists can fear for real now, as our existence is so severely challenged in the beginning of this monster of a century. The world is at war with itself, both on a nation-to-nation level and on a planetary level. We have to fight terrorism, global warming, genocide, political dictators/tyrants, drugs, alcoholism, obesity, an aging population, poverty, epidemics, natural disasters...and the list continues. The longer this list grows, the more doomed we seem to be. When does it all come to an end? Should we be expecting the Apocalypse much sooner than what we can ever hope for? Should we forget about making any plans for a happy long-term, long-lived future, and simply try to live the best we can within the foreseeable future, while also preparing to die possibly tragic and horrifc deaths? Do we have a future at all?

http://www.apocalypse2012.com/book/

http://www.apocalypsesoon.org/english.html

Yes, it is frightening, all this mumbo-jumbo, all this fear. Do we seek refuge in faith, hide behind the invisible protection offered by God? What alternatives are there to protect the sanity of the few who have no power against the insanity of the powers that be, and other menacing forces at play in this world of horrors and suffering?

on distance, suffering, worth, the absence of speech and wintermute

when someone like me keeps her silence, it's often not because of not having anything to say, but rather a confusion, even frustration, over what to say that would have the most significance, to create the most meaning and effect.
i do not have the gift of tact, or wit, that obscure ability to translate most appropriately what i feel into what i should say about what i feel or think i feel.
there seems to be no guarantee that what is said will be understood, nor is there sufficiency in the verbalisation of emotions that often are too complex to be expressed in words, because once the thought turns into speech the intensity of the emotion at the root of it all is diluted, almost transformed into a parody of what it should have been.
mostly the intention is to cause the least pain, because i know my propensity for harshness and cruelty, and i know i can inflict great misery. it is immoral to do so upon people who love me, care for me, and because of this will forgive me and pardon my sin.
this is a trap, because when it is demanded of me to verbalise my thoughts or feelings, to spit out whatever my reaction to the problem is, anything, i find myself dumbfounded but completely agonised. yes, i am the typical idiot who bottles it all up inside and just morbidly anticipates the day when i will be given a golden opportunity to explode but will fail miserably to express my incredible anger anyway, when that time ever comes.
i will end up saying something bland and colourless, which i know is acceptable and politically correct and non-offensive to the listener, but feel like screeching curses inwardly. rather schizophrenic, maybe.
it is a suffering that is marginally bearable and utterly masochistic, and i force myself to swallow it down, all the time, even as deep inside i am a railing maniac lashing out at anyone, whoever is the temporal cause or catalyst of my anger.
perhaps it is beneficial thus for me to live alone, be alone, enjoy solitary life away from anyone who may cross me. but at the same time i do feel keenly the distance between myself and the people i need to keep me from becoming a monster. the distance is almost a prison, yet also a gateway, and sometimes it is a pain that can be felt in the gut, or an emptiness within that cannot be filled, which makes comfort food and eating for nourishment a fucking joke.
i may be very depressed but too numb to admit it, because i know keeping myself numb and distant is protecting myself from falling apart. if i just let the agony or suffering get me down, i cannot enjoy anything, and that is damning my life to worthlessness. what would there be to live for?
but it is harder and harder to find meaning and value in everything i do, in the decisions i have made, and in all the consequences. it is more and more difficult to care about finding satisfaction in completing a project or finishing a piece of work. i am just numb and want desperately to move on, make the process less unbearable, less time-corroding, less miserable.
when i have nothing better to say, i tend to give monosyllabic responses or give a reply that will make the listener happy. but silence is not golden. it is rotting me out from within. that is why i turn on the television all the time to make sure i cannot hear myself think self-destructive thoughts, to make sure there is always someone on the TV talking and not the wrathful demons i have to fight down.
when one considers all the suffering in the world outside, the crying starving children of any Third World nation stuck in abject poverty, the victims of natural disasters and tyrannical corrupt governments, this life is nothing, miniscule, petty, a fucking waste of resources.
maybe i don't deserve anything. i am just an idiot brooding over nothing worthwhile, working for nothing worthwhile, feeling ridiculous inner rage for nothing. why do i even exist?
it's cold. can't feel much anymore.

Morphomoth

...

This be the verse

They fuck you up, your mom and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

Because it is you

There is no ruth in this fury
Senseless ire – it renders me speechless –
Breeding only rancour, this foul rotting bitterness,
And passive aggression:
Shrouded in absolute silence.

For two decades, hopefully less –
I have fed these, my blasphemous demons, in secret,
Dumped my grating, screeching, seething convulsions of base emotion
Frequently, fearfully,
Into this well of repression
Dug deeply, violently, desperately buried countless evils
In the name of gratitude, love, or some sacred right you claim.

At times, when rendered helpless victim –
Because I was never born equipped nor taught
How to wrestle with your wills,
Or find reason and calm in our miniscule battles
Only to succumb or withdraw in hatred –

I have prayed for escape, or at least
That the buried wrath would not corrode the love that should be
Paramount. (Are you not all-important, for giving me life?)

Forgive my sins, oh Lord, forgive my sins, for my mind cannot
Detangle itself from the roiling struggle.

And every conflict, every abrasive interaction
I am forced to face –
Proximity breeds contempt, indeed,
You probably feel the same anyway –
Every round cracks open the fault-line, breaks the restraints
Threatens to engulf me in frenzied rage

But I turn away
And run.

Though not before condemnation
Fiend I am, though fiend I toil not to be
In your eyes I question my existence, what I am, how, and why.

I know:
This skin-crawling gaping maw we own cannot be denied.
I only strive to hide my hideous anger behind
The wall we have built between us
And pray for some parody of cold war –
This ironic harmonious silence – may it prevail
In these moments of bleak rationale,
All amounts to nothing.

For Distance, like stark black and white,
Is both Problem and Solution.
While Blood, which we share
Only confuses with its tainted complexity,
Forbidden as It is to be shed.

The Price and Pricelessness of Bliss

It's been a long verbal emptiness for 2 months, a strangely comfortable void among the morphing spaces within my so-called intellect. Funny how one can think in pure visuals without words, sort of like lyric-less MTV. The scary thing is how we, the X/Y/IT generation - whatever you refer to us (the TV/Internet savvy generation) as - tend to have thought processes eerily akin to what we have grown up watching: jerky, randomised visuals arranged to form messages, priming our brains to draw meaning from all the pre-wired cues learnt through repetitive flashes of sound and image.

Are we more brainwashed than we will ever know? Ignorance is bliss, then.

Anyway, I'm just being distracted and rambling, as usual.

The points I originally wanted to record through this post were:
1. about how my personal happiness levels right now are surreal yet ambiguously bittersweet...
2. commentary about the death of a figure of authority who had a huge impact on my life, psychologically, emotionally, and literally, a teacher who broke my spirit and killed my youth...
3. musings about living 2 lives in 2 countries and how the twain shalt never meet, and how that distresses me...
4. how love is blissful, of course...
5. and nostalgia, and how some memories flood back in a strange way...

Well then. As my thought processes have gone distinctly Powerpoint Presentation-like...

Part 1+3+4:

As always, love casts a glow over all aspects of life, and as long as he's around and near, it seems like things will always turn out alright and I will be able to laugh heartily and be carefree.

Being away in AU makes life so much harder, simply because being alone and having to deal personally with all problems without having any support system to fall back on, be it physically or emotionally, truly renders one helpless and depressed sometimes. Distance does cause pain, that is something we cannot deny. Loneliness equals vulnerability as well. Friends are not dependable - who wants to always have to listen to a whining, whinging yapper - so in the end everything falls back onto one's lousy shoulders.

I have a separated life, something exacted by choice, the burden of which is solely mine, and in both lives I seem to be unable to truly belong. Maybe my mind or psyche is coming apart, struggling to cope with what I cannot control. In each life there are deep-seated issues that cause way too much distress to explain in so many words. I escape from one to the other but find no balance. When it boils down to the core of all this internal turmoil - me - what can I do for myself to improve the situation? Other than grit my teeth and find the raw inner willpower, blind faith, instinctive drive for survival and just the bloody guts to break through, I'm pretty much trapped on both grounds, though on different terms and conditions.

Right now my guts are lurching, my willpower seems to be drowning in a sludge-pit of depression and tears, and I just wish so hard that flat pictures and memories of bliss can help me to pull through, even as they remind me of the emptiness and foolish self-inflicted loneliness I have here and now.

In the end, I guess this much is factual about being human. We want substance, accountability, tangible material things that we can count and relish, and really it's all bullshit we come up with to make ourselves look "professional" and powerful, a cover-up for the shallowness of our lives where we resolutely sidestep deep thought about how exactly we are treating each other. So we can be as cruel, heartless and uncaring as all the grey areas in morals and ethics can allow, so that we can kill each other for personal glory, so that we can put down another to proclaim superiority.

And all this reminds me of Mrs Leicester, who is dead!

Death is the great "equaliser" of man, is it not? Death makes all man either ash or fertiliser. Does that not mean that perhaps the higher powers simply impose Life upon us as a great extended joke, a game in a game, one that we play against each other, within one where They play us?

Polyvore Whoring

Can't believe I spent hours on this!!!
Am perpetually a dress-for-fall person. Don't really like spring/summer floral girly dressy stuff.

Phobia Acquisitions

Over the years I've subconsciously become afraid of a couple of situations, which recently became slightly paradoxical (at least I think so):

I am discomforted by being forced to stand still and be enclosed in a public space with too many people. This applies to being in a crowded lift or a crowded train cabin, for example, or perhaps in a small club which has too many people squeezed in it. Or a toilet queue in a public restroom that is in great demand...the list goes on. I would much prefer to take the trouble and make the distance to get some space. What phobia is this? A combination of claustrophobia and agoraphobia, perhaps...but I don't go hysterical or froth in the mouth, though, just feel a little sick in the stomach and breathless sometimes. It gets worse when I'm under a lot of stress...heh Tony Soprano comes to mind...excuse my obscure references.

I recently realised that I'm not comfortable with silence in an enclosed space either. Living alone has its perks, of course, but I've taken to having the television on just for background noise, and I much prefer monotonously speaking/conversing human voices, such as the news going on incessantly in the back of my head, rather than MTV or some drama/film which will have the inevitable attention-seeking sound effects and screaming here and there. Music is fine, but I tend to get distracted by lyrics too. Bother my selective hearing!

Perhaps this is the process of urban hermitisation...I'm turning into a television-dependent hermit (as if I'm not already dependent on the TV, good grief!)...

Plus I'm a chronic channel-surfer, woe upon anyone who watches TV with me!!! My "click-interval" is approximately 3 seconds...horrific eh...*sheepish laughter*

Mindless Blathering Idiocy

Sometimes we cannot over-estimate the intimacy of understanding with people...it takes a while to get on the same wavelength, even longer to figure out a person's nature, personality, and sense of humour.

And that also applies to forgiveness. Often we can never tell how willing a person can be to forgive a wrong committed, or how willing he or she is to care.

Many a time when I speak before I think, it kills me to writhe internally when I spend the rest of the time afterward in agony about apologising, making amends, trying in vain to erase the error and fade the offence or insult. Has it got to do with low emotional intelligence or blatant insensitivity? Or is it a desire to cross lines, invade, and attack, an almost flippant love of risk and danger, even on an emotional level?

Then later on, if it seems to have been a whole horrible roller coaster of guilt and regret suffered for nothing, I wonder at my own neurosis and fear of rejection. Is it valid to be so self-absorbed?

Ah what foolishness, then. Does this make me lovable at all?

Oh bother.

Vacation Nostalgia II

more gorgeous shots of Amsterdam - the Village they brought us to was a tourist trap, but so bloody worth it.

Vacation Nostalgia

Amsterdam, Netherlands


Lucerne, Switzerland

I guess this is the whole point of being trigger happy* during vacations in far flung places. Looking back and wondering why the heck you left.

*= Taking 1000 photos in 9 days.

.etc...ramblings (Impulsive Keyboard Fingering)

For those who refuse to believe in any Higher Power, there's always the way things seem out of your grasp when you least desire that sense of helplessness.

You grumble to yourself about how shit happens and life's an asshole, but what about your own responsibility?

Are we shifting way too much blame on others simply because we underestimate our own ability to change life as we know it - simply by tweaking our perspective and initiating some form of action that deviates from whatever track we've been trudging on, for as long as we know it?

A comfort zone is also a complaint zone, perhaps?

WTF

Got gamergeeks for neighbours who persist in maxing out their excellent sound system and creating a pounding headache for folk who share walls with them. Fucking dickheads. Well, that first-person shooting game had better rot your brains man. Go blind, drop dead, may your console kill you.