謂我何求

于鲜活的枝芽
凋零下的无暇
是收获谜底的代价
余晖沾上 远行人的发
他撒下手中牵挂
于桥下

前世迟来者 (擦肩而过)
掌心刻 (来生记得)
你眼中烟波滴落一滴墨
若佛说 (无牵无挂)
放下执著 (无相无色)
我怎能 波澜不惊 去附和

一想到你我就
恨情不寿 总于苦海囚
新翠徒留 落花影中游
相思无用 才笑山盟旧
谓我何求

– Excerpt from 芒種

The Reasons Why We Work

Possibly makes more sense than Maslow’s Theory of Motivation

自分の「居場所」 、 見つけたいです。

The Strangest Man on Television, They Call Him

While watching some old clips of James Spader in movies like ‘The Secretary’, ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’, and ‘Crash’, I thought about how when BL novelists try to give their ‘super seme’ type of characters that eerily calm voice, or try to describe that dangerous flash in his eyes, it might be, well, his.

I happen to be a fan, by the way.

A Piece on Self Centredness

Saw this trending on Facebook the other day and had some strong opinions on the message it seeks to convey. Western media typically tells you to ‘be yourself’ and sometimes encourages you to turn a deaf ear to everyone else in the process, but first and foremost, do you truly know what the entity ‘you’ is?

I believe that most people do not truly know themselves, and thus the concept of “being yourself” is extremely problematic. One might identify with a set of beliefs and principles and think that they are somehow incorporated into ‘you’ but this ‘you’ would probably be something akin to an image you project on others and your sense of ‘self’. As this ‘self’ is probably going to be fluid, changing with your environment and circumstances, ‘you’ is simply a set of moving images over time, much like a movie. There is no ‘you’ worth trying to be, or be true to, only the image you wish to project at any one time, and how successfully you are able to do it.

Putting that horrible attempt at philosophy aside, I think most people simply feel what they feel at any point of time, act on their feelings or act contrary to their feelings, and then after that try to define who they are by trying to interpret their own behavior or other people’s reaction to their behavior.

That said, looking at my actions for most part of the 25 years I existed.. I don’t  want to be myself, not the least bit. No one would say dwelling on your past would do any good but I have made so many regretful actions over the past 8 years or so that just looking back makes me sad. I want to be a better version of myself, a version I have not yet achieved.

This pensive mood was not brought on by chance. Have been wrestling with such もやもや気持ち since.. well. My eldest brother is someone who sometimes makes decidedly pointed remarks which are for most part unpleasant, but not always wrong.

囀る鳥は羽ばたかない

Went on a BLCD acquiring spree yesterday. Some notable titles include Yoneda Kou’s Saezuru Tori wa Habatakani Series and the full suite of DMMD audio dramas.

Anyway.

囀る鳥は羽ばたかない
Hatano Wataru x Shingaki Tarusuke

I vaguely remembered reading the manga the thinking about how typically Yoneda Kou this work was, but better than usual. Apparently it is a big deal in the community now and some are saying that is her best work yet, and I am inclined to agree. In an amazing stroke of luck, the voice acting for this title was also excellent. I got excited seeing Yasumoto Hiroki in the cast but the main took my breath away instead. Shingaki Tarusuke is a BL rookie? Holy moly. I hope he is somewhere in Japan earning big money and getting lots of gigs. I got almost giddy on the train listening to the quality of the voice acting. It was like Border Line all over again.

Yashiro (Shingaki Tarusuke) is this lewd, mostly masochistic hitogirai who has probably fooled around with most of his gumi and is also in line to be the gumi‘s second in command. Don’t ask me how that mixed well, but it mixed well. Doumeki (Hatano Wataru) is an expressionless former policeman and ex-convict following Yashiro around as his bodyguard. He believes Yashiro to be ‘strong, kind and beautiful’, much to everyone’s mirth, but as the series progresses you will realise he is right. Kageyama (Yasumoto Hiroki) is the only person Yashiro ever cared about and Kuga (Ono Yuuki) is a host that Yashiro set Kageyama up with. There is Miyake Kenta and Ookawa Touru somewhere in there too. This is one star studded cast.

You can read the manga here.

This was the scene through which I learnt the phrase 「公務執行妨害罪」. Plus it was cute

The DMMD audio dramas were ennui inducing. I don’t think many fans actually think that DMMD plot or voice acting were particularly memorable (really, Mink? You needed someone to tell you that you were alive?), but the smut.. I get up just listening to the BGM.

While revisiting my old fangirl material again about a decade older (and wiser? I guess not), it kind of hit me that sometimes, just sometimes, the depiction of the climax in BL is.. almost entirely female, and the headier and more potently female it is the chance that the title would be a hit increases tenfold. DMMD is a good example of this; look at the Noiz x Aoba good ending in DMMD reconnect and you will know what I mean. BL media is, 所詮, mostly created by women for women after all. It kind of sank in exactly how remote and fantastical these fantasies are.. it made me feel a little forlorn, really.

These were heavy in my diet throughout my impressionable youth. I used to lie awake for an hour or so every night listening to them. It was like a disaster waiting to happen

Everyone harbours demons, but the largest ones are the ones you feed.

I try not to think about this too much.

Contentment.. for awhile

When I logged in, I realized I had a draft that wasn’t published.

‘I am sitting wrapped in an over-sized jacket on a cold Saturday morning, made cold only because of the air conditioning unit blowing cold air into my face while I am at my desk. My boy is wrapped in my blanket and very much asleep behind me, and would probably only wake up when he gets hungry. I had placed a mamegoma soft toy, one he had bought for me a couple years back, on his head whilst he slept, because I am an overgrown kid. I had gotten up early only because Nexon gave freebies to users who logged in between 6am – 10am on weekends, also because I was an overgrown kid. Am now sleepily looking at photos of home interiors and wedding dresses on Pinterest, both of which represent happy events to look forward to in the future.

Back then I used to fear anything that might distract me while I juggle my glass balls. My health. My boy. My family. My job. My dreams. Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m still hot and smoking from fiery youth, at 25. However now perhaps with some age I am beginning to think it was OK to not be juggling very well. Life is too short to be worrying about things you can’t control.’

Reminiscing

Was going through the old posts to standardize formatting and was struck by how much I have changed over the last decade.

In the beginning of the year I was going through a bit of a crisis and clearly remembered sitting in a cafe in Orchard feeling like I lost my 23 year old self and everything she believed in, but I see now that I lose my old self, bit by bit, everyday. It’s a different person writing each post everyday. Fall in love with me everyday, just like how i intend to fall in love with you everyday, and it will no longer matter how much you might change.

Things that were very important to me back then no longer matter. People whom I have cared about in the past have all but dropped out of my life. Problems that I grappled with back then that seemed so large and terrible and life threatening are now so insignificant that I chuckle while reading about how distressed I was over them. All these were part of my life and are now part of me, but these feelings and memories and experiences have long been filed away and forgotten in some dusty attic of my personality.

I now wish I could tell my 16 year old self to not worry herself over O’levels, I wish I could tell my 17 year old self not to waste her time thinking about someone who didn’t return her feelings because someone will a couple years down the road, with a generosity I couldn’t have imagined back then. I wish I could tell my 18 year old self that she was smart enough to do A’levels, I wish I could tell my 19 year old self to not worry about her sexual orientation, I wish I could tell my 20 year old self the implications of sharing so much of her life with someone else.

And I am sure my 30 year old self will look back and wish that she could tell her silly, heartbroken 24 year self that everything will be fine, too.

I am

The biggest idiot in the world.

This dawned on me, after hearing about your conduct.. barely months after we happened. or was it less than a month?

This is no longer a sad angry post about being spurned, because I am neither sad nor angry. I now regard the past year’s heartbroken entries with disdain and some measure of disappointment with myself. They are still here on my long suffering blog because I accept that whatever feelings I processed at that time are still part of me and part of life, but I have never been so glad that this chapter of my story is closed.

Nor am I so sure I won’t look back!

笑えますね

As said before, I do have a bad habit of chasing lost causes.

And perhaps to in order to comfort myself I guess all the pain and tumultuous whirlwind of knives cutting my soul is worth not being halfhearted and a coward.

And yes, I am tortured by emotions occasionally but I guess I do know that I create my own emotions and ultimately, and as hard as external stimuli may make it, I can dismiss my own emotions as well. It can be scary when I feel like dealing physical harm to myself every time I am reminded of the sob story I just lived, the one that involved a silly girl and scum but this sob story is pretty common, ain’t it? Scum is everywhere, after all, sometimes in the places you love the most. The girls try and try to connect but will eventually delete numbers and call quits. The girls pick themselves up after awhile and move on. I will be alright.

I guess I couldn’t be the girl who walked away with her head high without looking back after the trash was taken out. I guess I had to settle for being the girl that couldn’t let go of what was, well honestly, nothing much of worth and who looked back brimming with hope so often that she had to walk out of this with her head hung low. Real low.

Again, it is alright. I will be fine. This is not a competition and I shall try to not make it one but I have a happy life ahead of me because it is far easier to build a happy life with someone who wants me to write a large chapter in his story. The kind of happiness that those without a whole heart and courage and some basic sense to protect those who love you from harm will never experience and can never comprehend, regardless of the amount of wealth amassed or wealth donated or occupational respect earned.

I curse you to be so, as a parting emotion. Anger and hurt can make one think terrible things.

demons

And here I am, back again. Everything.. the colors, even the smell of lavender body lotion brings back enough pain to elicit insomnia. I have spent a good portion of time in a similar room sitting on the floor after a long bout of tears and staring with swollen eyes at the door. All of it is not going to go away soon, I realize. So many things you didn’t know, a thousand things I want to tell you, and a thousand more reasons not to. No one else will ever be privy to my thoughts again, especially not to one who time after time ran away from hearing them.

How do you say you love someone and believe it with utter conviction? How do you say that you have stopped loving someone and believe it with utter conviction as well? Love isn’t really that complicated, or so I thought. It is simply a desire to see that person, to talk to that person, to laugh with that person, to spend time with that person, to eat with that person, to create beautiful things with that person. I have looked at it too simply in the past, and the simpler I made it the harder it is to mold it into something I can control.

My mind is a hammer but my heart is not malleable.

Regret, fear, sadness, resent. Such a thick poisonous soup of negative emotions I’ve been drinking for awhile. Still I choose to appear in your presence again and again with the calmest and evenest demeanor I can muster, ignoring the nagging feeling that I might simply be doing so because I wanted to see you. I choose to revisit this place even though this is the last place I want to be at because, when facing your demons you can either run forever and hope they never catch up with you or to look for them and stare at them, keep staring at them until one day you can stare them down.

Until finally my mask becomes my face. Until my erected walls becomes arrow-proof. Till my heart completely turns into ice. Then would I have battled them and won.

At what cost?

勇気を持って走って行こう

Been a weird, blurry month. I amaze myself still everyday by doing all the unbelievably silly things silly girls do when they are heartbroken. Like constantly thinking about getting my nails done, my hair done, getting salon grade makeup, thinking of buying flashy clothes I never used to want to wear. It’s as if I forgot I was pretty and needed all these to feel pretty and good about myself again. It used to be so effortless in the past.
And then I saw. She told you to be brave, to follow your heart and walk on.
Perhaps you never were, never did, and never moved.

I can be overwhelming at times but it is a bit of a tragedy that in trying times a tall, strapping man could not face me squarely, look me in the eyes or stop running away from difficult conversations, while the diminutive one could. I saw a scared little boy shuffling his feet and looking uncomfortable with the adult responsibility to undertake all the un-pleasantries that come with proper closure.

It seems like you couldn’t handle what I brought along with what I could do for you, and instead chose to dwell in a prefect, tender loving memory in the past, wonderful yes, but immaterial and intangible right now, and unlikely built to last any bullshit that comes with sharing lives for a couple years. Perhaps all you wanted was a pretty voice at the end of the phone and lovely words over email and a nice warm body was just a plus point, and you chose that wonderful image over something that was real.

Thus came pity for you, after the urge to wallow in self pity ebbed a little.
I guess there is some pity for myself left in my feelings bowl who is still writing something akin to a love letter to you after all these. Boo hoo. There is also some resent and longing left, so mixed up that I can’t extricate the two. I have been pathetic. I am still pathetic. However after all these but I begin to see it will end, eventually. It is far somewhere near the horizon but I am starting to see the end of this soon. When there is nothing left and when the thought of you no longer evokes any appreciable kind of emotion, is when I have recovered from this long bout of sickness. Looking at you now, that day will definitely come.

癒えるかな

Sitting quietly in the same café as per normal every Saturday evening with a hot cup of drink and wondering how one’s life can veer off course and back on in a matter of weeks. I’m glad I could make it back before the ship I jumped on sank. I can’t swim.

I think the Japanese will call it 人情深い. I think it is used to describe people that are full of feelings. Who laugh with heartfelt joy, cry with genuine sorrow, flare up in white hot anger and love with their entire being. It may do me good to severe some nerves and disconnect a couple of synapses. No longer will I use alcohol to mask my heartbreak. Nor will I mope for too long. I have accepted that there is a price to pay for being the biggest blithering idiot that walked the high bay and I will pay my dues and quietly leave and pray I have strength to never look back.

In the midst of all the mess and uncertainly there was one thing that I was very clear about; I am going to walk tall and live with my head high. I think I have some reserves of strength to pick myself up and walk on. I have accepted that it is OK to not be 100% sure where you are going. It is perfectly fine because someone out there loves me a great deal and would walk with me holding my hand, and I will never have to worry that he would let go.

魂の底

It’s 初一 3.26AM and i’m in font of a computer after a very blurry DotA game after self inebriation with some whiskey and green tea. Cheap whiskey is hard to drink. But i guess I manage because I want to catch a glimpse of happiness, however temporal.

it’s the start of the Chinese New Year and i am derisively wondering how 堕落 i have become, resting my head against my desk and waiting for someone’s text just to know he is safe at home kilometres away and not in someone else’s arms. It’s a situation I never imagined myself in, never imagined prideful me will ever put myself into.

人生の交差点

A bright cheery afternoon on Valentine’s Day found me sitting someplace quiet in Orchard Road with a cup of brew and wondering about what to do with my life. Makes me recall that a couple months ago I was sitting in the exact same position on a stormy afternoon, staring blankly at the rain from behind a glass window, with a new tattoo burning away on my tailbone, albeit none the wiser.

われわれは何処から来たか、何処へ行くのか

It’s almost funny how utterly lost my 24 year old self feels after 23 years of thinking that I have full control over my life.

Where am I going? Where is this melodrama going to bring me? Do I want an easy and colourless life filled with abundance, love and attention? A time tested ally. The choice to stop working in the future. The choice to waste away in plenty in old age. Lots of girls might kill for such an opportunity. This might be everyone’s dream. This will probably be what I might be glad for 30 years down the road when my body grows tired and my spirit wanes.

Or do I want to throw away my anchor for stormy seas with monsters to slay? A life in an unfamiliar country with an unfamiliar language and culture yet shouldered with a rather daunting task of building kingdoms out of nothing with an ally with dedication yet unproven. Someone else’s dream. Why do I want to be part of someone’s else dream? I have always driven and am used to driving. Why the sudden longing to be driven? Why does my heart, time after time, long to take the road fraught with danger? How did I throw away the above in the blink of an eye for something that doesn’t seem at all to be of equal value? I am tongue tied for an answer.

Yet it seems, it is what I have been doing for a long time. I know, I have always actively searched for monsters to slay. It had been my desire to stand victorious in the face of adversities. To say I have conquered. I would be restless when I have nothing to slay. I had no idea this personality quirk of mine would topple me like this, and how basal this was. I recognise this as foolish youth. But how does one so deeply mired in foolish youth turn around and do otherwise?

And this brings me to square one. Back into a cafe with a cup of brew and having no idea what to do with my life.

bromance

Wowee. This looks so good.

I can almost feel my inner BL fangirl stirring in my loins. Almost.. but not quite strongly enough for her to compel me to read some torrid sherlock holmes BL fanfiction over going to sleep. Soon I will lose her for good, along with the raging hormones of my teenage years.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law

Which reminds me, tomorrow is the first day of school of my final year in university. Gotta start on a B.Eng Dissertation i do not know how to write, and to complete a Mechanical Systems Design Project for which I know not the direction. And in a short year’s time, I would be graduating from university and joining the League of Working Adults.

Lately i’ve been feeling like my youth is slipping from my grasp, which explains why I have been indulging in whimsical activities which I have wanted to indulge in for a long time but have not the time back then; boxing.. soapmaking..

I guess i just want to tick them off my list before I graduate and become just another OL in a pencil skirt and heels and sunblock bb cream. At least I would have no regrets then.