Archive for July, 2006
30 Jul, 2006
Singapore
I dedicate this poem to Singapore, my country, my home (just feeling patriotic).
Oh Honey, I really love you,
But I love my country more;
I’d give you almost everything,
But everything for Singapore.
17 Jul, 2006
I Love What I Write
I would like to profess that I keep an offline journal. I would call it a diary, save for the fact that diary sounds “girly”, and some of my guy friends might give me stick for that. As far as I know, I’m the only person I know who does it, though I believe I do know a few girls who might.
I do not believe any of my male friends even come close to recording their thoughts on paper, and most, if not all, would, as I’ve said, give me stick for doing it. So why am I admitting to something that might cause me embarrassment? Is it because I have no shame? Perhaps. But then again, if I didn’t admit it, I wouldn’t have been able to continue with this entry.
And like a professional webmaster, I’ll take the stick, if it means I can get to the carrot (I am vegetarian after all).
Writing in my Journal
I write in my journal on a weekly basis. What I write about range from the really personal (”I killed a man today, thank goodness it was only a dream”) to the for-public-release (the entry before this, To Strive and Appreciate, was adapted from one of my journal entries).
Reading my Journal
Craving something to read, yet not quite in the right frame of mind to do it (my mind was feeling a strange combination of sleepiness and impatience, which rendered most books unreadable; the only other book that might have satisfied me would have been a book of poems), I took out my journal and starting poring through previous entries.
Earliest Journal Entry
My earliest recorded entry was dated 11th November 2000. The first few pages have no paragraphs whatsoever, modelled after the journal the killer in the movie Seven wrote (which inspired me to keep a journal too, just in case I decided to follow in his footsteps and become one as well).
Strangely enough, it reads like some of my present day writings. I would have thought that my writings when I was 16 would be horribly immature, but besides the serial-killer-wannabe mindset that I had back then I haven’t changed really that much.
After reading the last paragraph I just wrote, I decided to re-read my first journal entry (the one in November); surely, I must have changed somewhat! How could I have remained static?
Thank god, some things have changed since then: I now use more interesting punctuation, including but not exclusive to colons, semi-colons, and parenthesis (which I read somewhere does not happen much if at all in the German language; the author of that work chided the other languages for using parenthesis, including English, Italian and French, as parenthesis are horribly indirect and beat-around-the bush, and lead thoughts to places other than the main text, causing a loss of concentration on the part of the reader. Why bother adding something that does not belong in the main text in the main text, right? If it has to be put in parenthesis, it isn’t necessary. If it isn’t necessary, don’t put it in. At least, that’s what he claims. I on the other hand, really love parenthesis. Not everything belongs in the main text. And though not absolutely necessary, words in parenthesis add feeling, creating an atmosphere or a train of thought that leads to something else, perhaps something else vital to the main text. I am quite sure that you have been led quite astray already, as this long text in parenthesis was actually partially meant to do, just to prove his point, which I quite agreed with, though I do not speak or write German. I also read somewhere about a book, called Absalom! Absalom!, by William Faulkner that had a few pages worth of parenthesised text and (horrors upon horrors!) parenthesised text within parentheses! Writing, with creative uses of punctuation, can create literary effects for literature similar to what creative cinematography can do for a movie: everything’s basically the same, but the framing of the words (or in cinema, the actors, props, stage, etc,.) help create feeling that traditional methods might not be able to emulate). My sentences are also longer, and I no longer ponder with words what other people are thinking about me, but what I’m thinking about other people thinking about me.
So, I have matured. But anyway, back to the main point.
I read through my entries, and realised that I love my writing. Is it just me, or is it something most writers feel as well? That one’s writings are some of the best writing one can read?
I’ve read through countless blogs, journals, forums and other places where people pour their thoughts out. But I still find my writing most agreeable.
If you’re a writer, I would like to hear your comments about this, that one prefers one’s own writing to others. If I had to hazard a reason why, I’d go with this: because one writes what one thinks, when reading one’s own writing it is like reading one’s own thoughts; which is like wiping one’s ass with silk: smooth, creamy, and really comfortable, though it doesn’t necessarily always get the job done.
17 Jul, 2006
To Strive and Appreciate
I figured that if anything, appreciating what you have is infinitely more important than seeking new ground, new things, new mental and physical territory. What good is living up to one’s potential if one is not satisfied with it?
Sure, the constant striving may expand one’s horizon, making one go beyond his or her pre-conceived limitations. But does being better in any way mean anything, if one is never satisfied with whatever one gets?
There’s always going to be someone, somewhere, better than one in some way. When is one ever good enough? When does one say, “okay, this is it, I’ve attained what I’ve sought”?
Why do we bother to sow the best seeds when the fruits of one’s labour constantly grows bigger and bigger, but never ripens?
15 Jul, 2006
Two Minutes to Go
It was a strange experience, this. I was on my way home, at Dhoby Ghout MRT station when a few people whizzed by from behind me.
“Don’t run!” the woman shouted to the three kids in front of her, herself running, trying hard to catch up with them.
Clack, clack sounds were heard. I turned around, and there was another woman running behind them.
I looked up and saw on the information screen that the next train was due in two minutes. “So,” thought I, “these people are running to catch the train. I wonder what’s their urgency.”
These people weren’t walking fast, they weren’t jogging either. These people were running.
And just as I thought the madness over when the woman guilty of the clacking ran past, she took off her shoes and started running. Took off her shoes!
Imagine the scene; at the front of the pack is a woman running after her kids, pleading with them to stop running. Not far behind her is a middle-aged man and a few students. And behind these is a woman wearing a dress, heels in hands, running barefoot down the escalator.
Jesus Christ, what’s the world coming to?
10 Jul, 2006
On Automatic Pilot
I just came back from a run in the rain. It has been ages since I last did that (running in the rain,) and back then it was out of necessity and bad planning.
Actually, come to think of it, all the times I ran in the rain were out of necessity and bad planning.
I decided to run in the rain today because my mood was bad, and I needed to do something out of the ordinary — something to break the pattern of thought — and this run was it; and it worked.
While running, I thought of several things. One of the major thoughts that ran through my mind were that of being “on automatic pilot”. How much of life is to be lived automatically, in a semi-conscious state of mind, and how much of it is to be lived with a carpe diem mentality?
I have read a lot of self-help and inspirational literature before. Many of them advocate “living in the moment”, being fully alive. According to them, the world’s too much on automatic pilot. Like automatons, we go around living our lives, but not participating in it. Carpe diem, seize the day they seem to say. Wake up!
But I’m awake. And it’s painful. It’s hurting me and I can’t do anything about it. I’m a sane man in an insane world.
I once read a book about running. Elite runners do not tune out of their run; they do not listen to music or distract themselves by dreamily looking around while they run, fantasizing about the run’s end.
Instead, they’re fully alive to the moment, listening to their body, observing their aches and pains. They need to tune in to their body’s nuances so they know if they should slow down or speed up, to run with a bias to the left or right, to open their stride or close up.
I tried this. In fact, I do this almost all the times I run. But I do not do this throughout my runs. And I believe elite runners don’t do this either. There’s a balance to be sought.
There’s a balance between being fully alive in the moment and being an automaton. You can’t run and think about the run all the time; otherwise, even if the running doesn’t kill you, the thinking would.
To me, when running, I only tune in to my body every once in a while, perhaps every 10 to 15 seconds. In between I allow myself to just run without thinking whatsoever, almost meditative. So it’d be,
“open up, going downhill…”
zone out
“ground flattening out, maintain pace”
zone out
“slight uphill, make steps slightly smaller, start quicker turnover”
zone out
“need more oxygen, slow down pace to two-breaths-in, three-breaths-out”
zone out
and not a constant bombardment of information,
“open up, going downhill. leg hurts. breathing too quickly. ground flattening out. leg hurts. why am I doing this?”
And as you can probably see in my fictional self-talk above, thinking too much will lead to questions of why. And we all know there is no ultimate why.
I’m just saying, we need be on automatic pilot more often than not. It is not that I’m condoning being an automaton, a non-thinking machine. It’s just that carpe diem is complementary and not a substitute for being on automatic pilot.
We can’t think about being alive all the time, it’d hurt too much. Instead, we need to balance our lives with times of spacing out, day dreaming if you will, and times of contemplation and doing things.