newfound addictions

and a renewed love for small, pretty things.

quiet weekends reading, signed up for gym. giving the dancing a break for now.

borrowing light

28 Feb 2012

wearing a snowflake obsidian bracelet to remove these psychic hooks, a find from mucking around my alien, adopted city last weekend. Came across a highway cutting through a building, a shop selling rows and rows of sweet-smelling shampoo, dyes, hair accessories and all the things you'd ever need, should you choose to set up a hair salon. All the while it was foggy, a wet, misty not-quite-rain that left my hair damp and these fingers, cold. And a row of jade shops, followed by a street of crystal shops - We walked through three without finding anything, till the fourth, owned by a man with a childlike humour and gentleness.

Picked out a sunstone bracelet and a snowflake obsidian bracelet from him. As he rethreaded them for me (tiny wrists only ask for 17 beads), we chatted. I asked him, so many people come to your store to buy crystals for love, wealth, protection. Why have you not used any of it for yourself? To call love to you? He said, love is something the young like you hunger for, when you get to my age, after a divorce, you've been there, and the thirst is stilled. I am reminded of the crystal merchant in the Alchemist. He asked us to stay for lunch and gave us both a labradorite ball. Beneath its dark gray, off-yellow sheen, there's a deep sparkle of blue.

At the last shop we went to, a dragon lady presided over it - graying hair and a joie de vivre, a loud voice scolding a customer she was displeased with and refused to give a discount to. From her, I got jade, lapis lazuli, red jasper, rose quartz, smoky quartz crystals in tiny balls, and a jet stone - protection, clarity, abundance, healing, love, but mostly, I liked their shiny colours. Then my friend called my attention - something she'd been looking for, for years - a soulmate crystal. As she picked up her piece, I found one for me too. a quartz crystal formed of two distinct halves, growing together, with a hidden rainbow between. The dragon lady gave it to us cheap, with a wink. They are sitting on my window sill now, after a wash, to take in some sunlight and moonlight. Their shimmer makes me happy.

you, a distant, bright, brittle star.

*

i wish i had a camera then, to freeze this fragile memory - you in black, uncurling in the chair, in the yellowing autumn light. that heartbeat of vulnerability when you turned from the window and looked at me. i wanted to hold you then.

*

But there are distances we cannot close anymore. i wonder where the boy that was has went. or if he realised the gift he once left me, beyond the strawberry cheesecake kitkats and letters. i don't think i want you, as much as i wanted the connection we had then. and i wonder where the girl that was, has went.

*

goodbye slipped off the tongue easily. but it was strangely hard.

only in hk

2nd nov: "we have an apartment for viewing"

(me - runs down to view at lunch)

" can you submit your documents?"

(me - scans, submits)

3rd nov: "start lease 10th Nov, no later. yes/no?"

So. I've just contracted my new apartment. >.<

I don't know why I'm moving, except that I feel my time is up in the current place. It is a pretty space, a girl's space, a dance studio, but lately, I've not been feeling safe, nor sleeping well in it.

The new apartment is less fancy, older. Unfurnished. the neighbour plays the piano badly.

I hope time will show me it's the right move.

On to furniture hunting and flat furnishing the next couple of weeks. I've never done that alone before. *eek*

turning life into flowers

a million scarlet roses

Permissum is quisnam est vacuus sin

re-reading parts of an old blog this quiet sunday night. been sleepless again. patterns.

Ae, in response to Night:
Vulnerability is not a weakness... but open-ness and acceptance of things;
Perhaps that is a precondition to loving.

Perhaps it is a reprogramming of the mind needed - I've always fought against being vulnerable.
It was always easier to hide behind the thoughts.
Safe grounds.

I've always been seeking reasons. Could not understand the nature of attraction, desire.
Still don't.

Feelings have always seemed like a moebius band. Illogical.
As such, to be buried, burnt, discarded.
Acts of self-immolation.

Preoccupation with flaws - while missing out the picture:
That not recognising and acknowledging the feelings were an invalidation of self.
The act of immolation was illogical, not the feelings. Desire, attraction are real... that is what matters.
Also to keep in mind... they do not matter too.

Part of a journey, but not all of the journey.

Gibran had it that faith was an oasis we could not reach by the caravan of thinking. Same with love, mayhaps.

The portrait is always there. Coloured perceptions and imperfect judgment are our marks on it.
In a way, it becomes a mirror too.

Be gentler on myself?
Acceptance makes us whole again.

"Smile and the world smiles with you".

Thank you, Night.

roses in winter

has been a long week of sorts. originally planned to fly to tokyo for a break, the earthquake hit and we cancelled, did a last minute change to thailand. and watched the world change.

a dear friend in bahrain where martial law was just declared, another in japan originally within the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear plant zone, more colleagues and friends in tokyo. memories of the loss of a friend during the asian tsunami some years ago. his body was never found.

sifting through all the media noise; facebook and skype enabled finding out that everyone is ok so far.

this watching from afar is hard.

the greatest lesson in letting go perhaps - learning to trust someone to make their own choices, be it for the better or worse, being proud of them for having grown up, though somewhere inside of you is crying for them to be safe, be home. and the recognition that home is not with you, yet that is ok.

thoughts and prayers for both the boys. i wish for roses in winter.

oshiharu

life moves on. i've since lost the reasons why.

in the depth of living my first full winter, learning how cold cotton bedsheets can be. sleep is fitful; that hasn't changed.

finding the seeds of a new spring. slow stirrings. seeing people as is neutralises the disappointment of being human.

the waves of mental anxiety never really cease, they quiet, pause, but return, in force at times. the sense of suspended, slow movement through ice water has not been back for a while; for that i'm grateful.

trying to avoid going back onto old pathways is harder than imagined. this awareness is a pain on its own.

learning to identify triggers, and to self-arrest. and to accept help. to slow down.

the distinction between creating space and being emptied is clearer now to the heart - letting go is still a conscious act, but comes easier these days.

planning a new garden for spring - basil, oregano, chilli, pansies, columbines and poppies perhaps, wondering how to colonize the terrace outside.

resolution for this year - to learn to take my place with grace, sans apology, sans rudeness.

little raves

junk boat trip?
rave.

pole dance party?
rave.

junk boat pole dance party?
RAVE.

i'm a happy bunny.

goodnight moon

soundtrack for the month: Shivaree - goodnight moon


leaving pier 9 ~




goodbye sunlight~




hello north star ~




and highway lights.




moonrise ~




So goodnight moon
I want the sun
If it's not here soon
I might be done
No it won't be too soon 'til I say goodnight moon

in memoriam

fall

or did you jump.

despite what the papers said / unsaid. will never know.

nor perhaps, is there a need to. my box of phantom questions grow, and this slip bears your name.

i will not pretend to know why you lived, nor why you chose to die, if indeed, that choice was yours. i can only wish release for your human-shaped heart, and that you find peace in this jagged closure.

sleep sweet.

changes

"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country." - Anais Nin

cherry blossoms. a spring I've been needing inside. the depth of release is both a pleasure and a wonder.

I know things will not be easy, but the heart is lighter now.

Sunshine and space. Motion. The greatest thing you've ever learnt. is just to love, and be loved in return.

daisies

I leave them to your memory. Your birthday's coming soon. In pace requiscat.

As much as I love roses, I've always been more of a wildflower than a hot-house species. I could wear the dresses, the jewellery, the shoes, put on the makeup and carry the bag, do the banka-wanka thing. I think I've done enough of a convincing mimicry for the last 7.5 years that recent friends always do a double-take when they learn of the other things I get up to.

But a part of me remains the convent girl running barefoot on the beach, calling out jibes to the neighbouring mission school boys, giggling over the graffiti on the toilet walls, throwing tissue paper to stick on the ceilings and making Chinese tutors cry. The same part which gives rise to these itinerant fits of wanderlust and dance forms not within the realms of "appropriate".

The choice came, something I'd turned down two years ago.

"We have an opening and you're the first we thought of"

"It'll be a local contract"

"You realise we'd have no guaranteed place for you for a return?"

Am I afraid, yes, there are things and people I find hard to leave behind. The mind is uneasy - why am I giving up good enough for an unknown chance; given HK will be in many ways, tougher than here, and I don't know if there's room for wildflowers or honesty there. I wish you were here so we could talk and I'd feel less afraid.

What made the choice in the end was simply what Aaron had said some time ago, "above all, never be afraid of movement."

White roses, red roses. Destiny, chance. Perhaps neither. Just seeking a field and a sunbeam to call home.

cookie happyness

I got a cookie today. A dear friend wildcat once said perfection is an illusion, there are only honest attempts. But this cookie fulfills all my criteria for a cookie. Perhaps it means my criteria is flawed, but it also means I have a perfect cookie in my little world.

And this makes me happy with the world.

david

"I wish you’d realize there’s no salvation or damnation in the opinions of others. You will never be completed by their reactions or words. All you can do is take what’s best in you and the truth in your bones and move forward without apology. You may not have a flawless appearance. You may not be the smartest or the wisest, but you have so much spirit and don’t even know it. Hate is too easy. Resentment and viciousness are weapons that only dismantle the others lies while protecting your own. But I never see you stoop to that – and yet you doubt yourself because other people do. Why don’t you just look in the mirror for one second and see how goddamn fucking awesome you are and how the only thing wrong with you is not realizing how right you are? Somehow, I think you’re on the cusp of understanding this and when you do, you’re going to own the world."

there are moments i slip up, and these scribbled lines are but poor thanks for the faith of a friend that is at once a salve and an arrow.

looking forward to a holiday in a week's time. =)

In pace, requiscat.

Some days, I feel you at my back. The bunch of us five used to cross the bridge together on the way home from school. Midway at the top of the arch, you'd stop to catch your breath. At first we put it down to the heat, or the physical education classes earlier in the day. Laugh about growing old.

We were sixteen then, and the distance you could walk soon grew shorter.

You started to skip school, always complaining of being tired. Then you dropped out. At that time there was still hope – as doctors scrambled for a diagnosis, you said you hoped to be back in school in six months or so. Then, the answers came, a diagnosis I cannot recall now, but I remember the doctors giving you six months to live. You asked, “What can I do?”, they said, “Just pray.”

They were wrong though. You outlived their diagnosis for more than two years, years spent following traditional therapies, alternative treatments – noni fruit, acai berries, your family and church praying. Your dad’s hair turned white in that time. I remember bargaining with god to take half my life for yours. Perhaps I felt cheated when my promise wasn’t exacted.

Visiting you was difficult; the line to draw on what to share was hard to find: new friends, schoolwork, exams, crushes, first loves. At the back of my mind, I knew the pain it must’ve cost you, that sense of abandonment, yet the conflict from still wanting to be a part of normalcy. We were crossing bridges, but no longer together.

You feared dying. There was a lot you wanted to do, and feel. You weren’t able to sleep towards the end, said there were things waiting for you in the night. We made a lamp for you which you kept lighted till morning. Even now, I find it hard to sleep in complete darkness.

When you died that night, my phone was off and I missed the call. I am sorry.

I could not cry at your funeral, I only remember the white roses and your favourite hymn, “As the deer”. I rarely cried after that. Through it all, the surface was maintained, perfect grades, internships, glowing testimonials which praised intelligence, focus, helpfulness et al. But there are gaps in my memory, years where little mattered and the few photographs show shadowed eyes and hollow smiles.

It has been nine years or more. In retrospect, I think I was angry, a splintered, white-hot burning. But I broke down only after two years. I’d been reading for medicine, but abruptly swapped to accountancy, burned through a relationship as well. Little razor cuts to efface a larger pain. I felt guilty for being alive.

Our group of four is closely knit, bonded by invisible bridges not named now. It took years to process these emotions and I think I did not let anyone close to me after. People have found it hard to understand why I never lasted in relationships. What is real is changeable, and sometimes it leaves these gashes that don’t heal evenly. It was always easier to see what others needed and to be that – and perhaps I feared if this ugliness got out, I’d be abandoned again.

We met your mom again at a wedding of a schoolmate, and more recently this year. We wrote to her every year. We talked of upcoming holidays. Your dad is retired now, and has taken up fishing, besides bugging your mom since he’s home a lot more now. Your sister is with a cult make-up house.

I rarely think of what you’d have been. I remember you on the bridge always. I look at what I’ve become and I see how far I’ve fallen from the girl who had faith to the doubts and brittleness now. It was only recently that I learnt to trust and with it, to cry again. These washes of emotions are unfamiliar, yet not new. Perhaps the main difference is this: the anger that was buried was released and I no longer damn myself for what I failed to do, nor damn myself for living.

I think I only knew how to love deeply then, and letting go, being happy, felt like a white-washing of your existence. But seeing your family at peace, was perhaps the start. Hearts iced over, melt, and with it, a recognition: I’ll love again. Perhaps I’d lose again. But that is not important.

The sunlight feels warm on the skin. And there are new seeds to plant. I’ve only a limited number of springs, as you did. Still, it is enough to live today. It is all we’ll have.

In pace, requiscat.

red dust.

I don't doubt the impossibilities of things these days, only, that the fight for some could be harder than others, and the cost to one may not be the price another wants to pay.

The engulfing, blue-blackness and sense of submersion so prevalent in the last months have lessened. Some days are already shimmering pale, and some moments, there is gold in the air.

"The most I ever did for you was to outlive you. But that is much." - Edna St Vincent Millay

Attended the wake of my grandfather last October, and the granduncle earlier this month, trying to find the words to paint these images: They were not exceptional men, neither did they pretend to be. Many flowers were sent for them, which lined the hallways. And many visitors came. Perhaps testimony to them having finished their own fight, in their own way, as best as they could. They did not please everyone, certainly, there are some who feel cheated. Inheritances and all. Yet, heart against feather, the final weighing is not mine to make.

I know the view of love and relationships I hold is archaic to many; it has nipped many relationships in the bud. I look at my grandaunt, facing the end of life with an empty hollow by her side where there used to be her husband for the last 60 years. I wonder if I even have the courage to love as deeply and face that end alone, or worse, to leave someone to face that alone.

Red dust. A reference to the fog of material illusion which a person must find his way through.

"Always be a little kinder than necessary." - J.M. Barrie

I can take nothing with me except what I leave behind.

Awareness, of my own nature, to work with it vs. against it. Of past choices, future choices. Consequences to live with. And how I wish to be remembered.

It is fragile, but I think I'm more at peace with me than a year ago.

Planting

Digging in dirt is therapeutic. Spent my Saturday with plants, supper with friends, and re-reading old books.

The above is an epiphytic orchid with deep green leaves and a purple underside. The old man who sold it to me some years back said he had gotten it from some wild place, never gotten it to flower, and didn't know the type. I got a propagation of his original. It was on a bark tablet then, but not doing well. I repotted it into a clay pot with a mix of charcoal and tree bark. I'll know in a month or so if the roots take, and perhaps, I'll see flowers sometime.

Repotted another one I'd gotten from our Botanic Gardens (bought legally!) into a mix of tree bark and charcoal, in a hanging basket of coconut fibre. It flowered only once in the last years, a spray of tiny 2-3 inch flowers with deep red-purple, thrice-twisted petals and a white heart. A sweet fragrance too, which is rare of orchids. Typically, only the white dendrobiums have a noticeable fragrance, as if to make up for the lack of colour.

Both have a little clod of moss to keep them company too. Besides that, also planted a tiny aloe vera sapling, some clitoria and chilli seeds.

Tiny seeds, greening shoots. Hope.

The orchids were not struggling, but they were not growing either. Breaking the clay pots meant giving new ground. We take a risk with transplanting, and with rarer species, it is a hard choice. I do not know if I could find those specimens of orchids again.

We are often told to flourish where you are planted, or seek new grounds. Like my epiphyte of purple leaves, I've done both, perhaps with the same result as it has. Yet neither wishing nor waiting changes whether something grows or dies.

Air, sunlight, darkness, water, fertilizer.

All I can do is provide the conditions.

Each in their own time.

becoming

black

white

colours.

There are these times. Words trip, fall in the slipstreams of the mind. Halfling sentences, stillborn thoughts and I paint my skin with these fractal expressions which are rainbows to you but borrowed sleeves of colour to me and ultimately, gray.

I am one shade less black and one more white than you. It does not mean I have colour.

Suspension. Moving always, one creates the illusion of being stationary, running in circles. Trying to understand me, you seek references yet each frame captures a different phase, face. Confounding, frustrating, multi-dimensional, complex, I've heard them all. Movement, complexity are relative measures.

Deconstructing the mind. For how long could I whittle myself down to fit another's perceptions. Reflections are mirrors with silvered backs. Don't look for your completion in me. I could, yes, take whatever form you require. I would, and I have. But that is a testament to me, not to you. I have my own dance and is it me that betrays then when I say my real name and move in ways foreign to you. Or was it a lie because you never saw me.

I move differently. But I am ordinary. And mostly, I'm afraid you'd see that.

Strange and beautiful

Been staring at the blank screen, not knowing what to write for the last weeks.

Work has been busy, changes within the organisation, within the team too. Not sure how it'll work out.

Catching up with friends (including a hilarious date with a fine lady), some weddings to come, cha-cha and rhumba lessons, MBTIc-ing, besides preparing for the impending secondment to Hong Kong and trying to arrange the trip to Hawaii after.

'Tis a full plate of activities, but there's a certain weariness that does not go away. Feels like I'm operating on remote.

Feels like the new year never really came, sometimes.


absolution

the quiet sea breaks.
on iced shores of fragile bones,
unfinished nights weep.

dry-eyed, the day stares
at empty faces, places.
reasons fade to gray.

spring brings with cupped hands,
atonement, absolution
or just. forgetting.

Jan 2008