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25.6.06"I told him, you know. I told him years ago.It was at the end of my reign. I closed the final door to Hell, and I told him... I told him that i owed him much for having given me the impetus to go. I told him that there was always freedom, even the ultimate freedom, the freedom to leave. You don't have to stay anywhere forever." - Lucifer, The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman this will be my last post here. as with all last things, it will have a certain amount of nostalgia, some vestige of happiness at a brighter future, and perhaps a tinge of regret mixed in between. it's been what, nearly four years since i started this, as a little diversion to my life, perhaps somewhere where i could store my thoughts on, a small corner to sing out to the world, whether someone really cared to listen or not. and from the rough, hurriedly-sketched notes at the start, to the more measured mediations at the end, it's been with me all along, another window inside me (but one that only opened into one room) regardless, it would never have been a representation of my innermost thoughts, but in what i alluded, what i wrote down, it gave them a chance to look in. and what would they have seen? *laughs now that one would be harder to answer. i used to write that i had four separate personalities, but that was a long time back. i guess i'm down to two now, one laughing and singing and playing with the tunes of the world, and one other intensely private one, which only several people have seen. but yes, i never really bothered to explain, or to come out of the rain when i was feeling down, and they will just have to keep it like that. i'm that way. :) in many ways, these four years which the blog has been privy too has shaped much of my life now. i learned to reach out of my circle and dream with the world, learned that i will always have a little bit of my heartland soccer-playing and cs-shooting boy within me (for who can forget those four bags and one ball, and ice milo afterwards at bishan), and the chess trio (how many times did we belive, and win) and the camps, mass dances with ten people, and the celebrations and the tears... I learned how to push myself, learned to knuckle down and smile, wrote some little vignettes which i forget now but will no doubt remember fondly in the future and hummed to jazz and elvis and beatles and, most recently, them grating army songs. I climbed a mountain, smiled in the thunderstorm and snapped photos at new year parties, held my stance in history debates and pronounced myself in essays. And I fell in love, once. so where will i go now? that's a good question, both metaphorically and figuratively. i guess i could go out, up and about, but there are still too many unresolved things, too many loose ends, to really leave. no, i think i shall try to become more of myself (in the realisation that i have slipped away slightly) and also, i shall move my thoughts online to another site. a new start, a fresh start, on the cusp of my undergraduate life. and hopefully that new journal will be as every bit as pretty and memorable as this one. so, to everyone that is out there, farewell from a distorted-muse, and hopefully anyone reading this would have gained a bit of insight (and maybe, a smile). as a mythical foxglove once said, the whole of art is maybe about spraypainting your thoughts on a wall, hoping that someone will see it when you're gone. this is, ladies and gentlemen, the final spray of the paint, and it's bright orange and red, slashing across the black night where i'm typing this. thanks for all the memories, and see youall at my new blog soon. :) ___________________________________________________________________ 17.6.06it just occured to me that this may be the last post i do before i disrupt from army. nevertheless, prepared for it already, gotten the gifts, waiting to wrap up any loose ends, and looking forward to pre-departure course and then some time off.anyway, was supposed to go coco latte yesterday but people suddenly canceled when i reached, so in the end i was left to wander clarke quay alone. still, what i thought would turn into a major letdown was eventually a blessing in disguise. stood on one of the bridges, listening on my zen to sweet jazz, and just paused to contemplate my life. would that i had pen and paper to write down everything, to chronicle the thoughts that meandered through, but life can't really be perfect. :) in the end, i guess i needed that as a break from army - slack as signals is, it's routine schedule can sometimes get to you, make you circle around without aim. i guess i straightened out some thoughts in that hour under the stars. how things turn out, only i can make right. and afterwards, i caught the first half of the holland-ivory coast match at a macdonalds, and was lucky enough to witness three superb goals and a shot that hammered the dutch crossbar. the way the play, the game of beauty. that is what i want, isn't it? life filled with beauty, and sometimes, a touch of chaos and uncertainty. maybe i shall start a new blog soon. i've written here for almost four years. then again, maybe version 5 would suit just as fine. we'll see. and today, i learnt that i've a lot to be happy about. :) so see everyone on friday. ___________________________________________________________________ 11.6.06"For me, war has become a flat, black, depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhausation of the spirit. In the emergency of war our nation's powers are unbelievable. I have heard soldiers say a thousand times, 'if only we could have created all this energy for something good' But we rise above our normal powers only in times of destruction."- Ernie Pyle, quoted by Stephen Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers the first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is one in the first place. such a waste that too often, we refuse to do so. i guess for myself, i learnt this rather too late. still, better late than never. how do you start off from a clean slate, when the old one cannot be scrubbed away? consign it to dreams and memories, and then try to rebuild it all over. give me strength for that. but anyway, proceeding well on all fronts other than that one, the new laptop is pretty silent and powerful, while disruption is coming ever nearer and i might even have 3 days of leave next week. having ever more time to read now as well, which will help me get back up into gear for serious mugging in july and august, and organizing other little surprises which may, or may not, come true. time will tell. be back (hopefully) on wednesday. and i have decided that if i ever start the day off with a prayer in some form, i will pray for the day to unfold with some shade of life and love, in all its pure and simple elegance. just one day at a time. ___________________________________________________________________ 4.6.06so many beautiful things to talk about, and yet so little time. the hectic shopping for a laptop, the dance which has beautiful technique but no one understood, pasta fresca, then looking for al dente and a wonderful crab bisque, flirting with jazz@southbridge... well, the time has flown. :) be back soon.___________________________________________________________________ 1.6.06"I begin deliberately with those dizzying surfaces and passageways - movement, an inundation of data, which I think reflects how the world is today - and you have to fight your way through it to get to the stillness and the settledness and the space that begins to open up in those last two chapters.The first chapters make you almost jet-lagged; there's so much information that you can't tell right from left, east from west. In part, the book is about the passage from speed to slowness and surface to depth." - Pico Iyer so no disruption just yet, but i'm taking it in my stride, and matters should be able to work out fine. but anyway, had three days of block leave since signals course only starts tomorrow, and i guess they've been pretty fruitful, even though i've been alone most of the time. after a hectic bslc, it kind of just gave me the time to breathe again, let myself find back some sembalance of life, and well... look forward to pastures anew. stirred myself to go shopping for some new threads on tuesday, and bought dress shirts and a new tie from topshop, which does look quite nice. :P and i managed to sit down at borders - how long has it been since i've donw that - and read the undercover economist (which i must get) in absolute calm. accompanied by michael buble, john coltrane and a lady which i don't know but will find out, i sat there and contemplated the world :) from speed to slowness, from surface to depth. it's kind of like hitting the brakes, giving yourself time to appreciate, to love, and to explore. on tuesday, i went on this major geek craze, and in the process discovered several wonderful sites and utilities as well as reinventing firefox on the black computer. only when i saw the vastness of technorati and lifehacker, the absolute craziness of boingboing and kuro5hin and the incredible efficiency of bloglines, then i understood the revolution in media a bit more. it's never going to come to us anymore, in mass forms such as tv and the news. this is where it belongs, and in the enduring vastness of information, it's really every man for himself, to shape as he wishes. it might be for the better or worse, but we are on the crest of a wave, and it's time to go ride it. and today i went to the pc show to suntec, and met this girl at the samsung booth and asked about tech support in london, and after we talk i find out she's going king's to do medicine and was shirin's and kash's classmate. it's a small world sometimes. :P so yes, the world seems brighter and more open, more... exciting. let's see how far i can run with this. carpe diem, carpe diem. ___________________________________________________________________ 21.5.06"But 'twas ever thus in football: to the winner the cup, to the loser the unshakeable belief that it was all the fault of the referee, life, the universe and God"- Simon Barnes, The Times so lse it is, and i can't say that i am disappointed. yes, oxford would have been pretty, but the heart of london is a good enough place to be in. besides, there will also be people i know in ucl and king's. my only concern would be that i would get lynched by arsenal fans who can't get over the champions league final. :P and with the largest humans library in the world, who's complaining? but anyway, still a few loose ends to tie up before all that. last week of bslc coming, and it should be fairly easy, but i think i'll miss it in a wierd way. digging shellscrapes, falling in at golf company line, going for section training, firing a $4000 live matador, jollibean at nights out - some of the many memories, i guess. ahwell. time moves on. and thinking of what i'll do after that already, for once, the world seems open and blank, a white slate to write on. and if this post seems a departure from my usual style, perhaps it's because i think it represents an ending of sorts in army, and preparation for a new experience out and about. then again, was that just being put into freeze-frame? *laughs. so yes, when it is all done, i shall lie back, listen to some sweet jazz, play some little games, and start to oil my rusty brain again. too much oiling of rifles and too little of the brain is not good. ___________________________________________________________________ 14.5.06"it began as a carriage, pulled by two black horses pounding across the waters of night, their hooves striking sparks of tiny stars, splashing through the wet darkness in a wild, tireless gallop. as it reaches the sands that border the dreaming the carriage becomes, without slowing, a train.such a train it becomes, oh! a gleaming black and silver deco dream of a train that clacks along the silver tracks with the unchanging rhythm of a nursery rhyme; and perhaps, if you listened hard enough, you could imagine you could tease words from the pulsing clatter... all around me the darkness gathers; fading is the sun that shone; we must speak of other matters; you can be me when i'm gone..." - Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, The Kindly Ones apologies to gaiman to quoting such a large portion, but it is simply beautiful, a certain lyric beauty in how the words tumble down carelessly, foreshadowing the sandman's fall, with a bittersweet abandon - can you read it and not feel the freedom beyond past caring? - that draws us in even if we do not want to share the pain, the death. a counterpoint to the upward glissando of rhapsody in blue, one closing a chapter while the other opens a symphony, both racing along, one on a train-track, one on the scale of a clarinet. hurtling along, to the unknown, but the rush, cherie, the rush it inspires. like the piano in wave, fast beats in a fantastical paradise, lost to order, simply feeling and understanding, that art is forever meant to inspire, to delight, to mirror, by dark and by light. and at the end, we can't even put a definite finger on how we feel it. we just feel the beauty tugging inside the heart. and that was for myself and my private ruminations, but if anyone sees a little bit of beauty inside, they are welcome to it. at least one more person will have smiled tonight. - i wandered along the road today, thinking about how much i needed a kiss. and like all good days, i spent it reflecting, contemplating life over an ironically named devil's chocolate cake. and we met, nine of us, and talked of past memories and future days ahead, and of joys and laughter and pain and sorrow and worry, and at the end, it was a gathering of people whose lives had crossed for two years, and the dots then diverged again, possibly reconnecting some time in the future, possibly bouncing about each other now, and in the end it was a pity some had to leave earlier. and in the night, i passed by hundreds of people, sitting by the various seats and benches and stairs along the road, as if in their own little world, and my first thought was of them being passed by by the world, like how they stood in slow, manequin-like motion when compared with the shoppers passing by. but then i saw my own spot, where i had done the same last time back, and i went and joined them on my spot. they were not being passed by. they were dreaming, acting, remembering, like what i was doing, as the street lamps slowly dimmed. i could leave, i guess. that is the ultimate freedom - to leave, and take off into shadow and sight, and as it was termed, run the best nightclub in this whole city of angels. i have seen it done before, and will see it being done again. but something, well - my own conscience, perhaps? - prevents me from walking away. and more importantly, because i don't want to. i still have hope. but even though i have not left, i have changed, i think. could i have wanted, or anticipated it? i told myself i had four sides before; now i think i have two only, or maybe a third lying somewhere. one side, which stands stable and cleanly divides the points at hand, into some sort of a perfect circle, and then draws his own circle of thoughts around it, perfect and pristine as it can be. and the other, which dreams of pillows and hums to jazz and goes along to that unknown melody he has been trying to pinpoint since he was five but still cannot, tries to find the sweetness in roses and little surprises and double hearts and, and - i am thankful that i have both. so as long as i believe, as long as i still have my own, as long as i can hope, i can try. - [10:47:35 PM] ~ a song pla: i studied bits of psychology in my holidays. in life, we have different ways of expressing love and affection. and so, all of us have a love tank of our own. and what happens is that, people often have different ones but sometimes we identify strongly with a certain one. they are....words of affection or confirmation, gifts, service, time, touch. each of us tends to have one more strongly. and what happens is, for example, if someone is a service person sometimes she will clash with a words person without knowing why because she will do so much for him, but he seems untouched by it so which are you? :) [illudene] t: well really depends i guess. i'd always thought of myself as a words person. [illudene] t: but to an extent, i realised that i need confirmation. ~ a song pla: guys actually, tend to be that. few guys are service. *haha this was more than two years ago. funny, how it was predicted so blindly. i guess sometimes you can only connect the dots backwards. - and opening it, i realise i don't want to close it off. and there are quite a few things i want to post here. *sigh. i haven't used the term *sigh in a long while, i just realised. what would i give to exchange songs in a flicker now, or to have a bet that my worksheets would be drawn upon. [12:39:43 AM] - I thought : and for you.....lets say.....may you learn to cherish. [12:39:47 AM] - I thought : :) or, continue cherishing in this storm, in this night, i must always remember that my life is my own, and what i make of it. i am not blessed enough to know my own fate, but i am blessed enough in that i can mould it myself. and if not, i shall trust, and wait. [11:34:36 PM] [illudene] A: then at least allow me to leave you with these lines: I'll find you In the morning sun And when the night is new. I'll be looking at the moon, But I'll be seeing you... ___________________________________________________________________ |
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