Rediscovery

Still feeling time being grinded out by work and everything and anything.

I guess everyone has a notion or definition of what literature should or could be, but I would put it as something that goes from objective to subjective as you delve and immerse in it. So much depends on you relating to what you read and using imagination of the mind to recapture that moment of inner most thought by the author.

And truly enough, poetry is the most intensive and 'immense' in language use. It's pretty much like a photograph that effects the pictum upon the reader. And the beautiful thing about poetry I guess, is that each time you read it again, it offers you new insight and creates new meaning. Yes, it is subjective in a sense that the interpretation is about yourself and how you relate to the experience or perception the poem offers


The Secret
Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

Absurd is the automobile accident

Nothing is as absurd as a automobile accident. (And to think Camus had to end his life as such too) Sometimes, the very thought of how crossing the road or riding a car can change your life forever, just constricts the world around you to this line of absurdity upon your life threads upon. Such brevity upon which mortality imposes itself upon you again, and where you question meaning and purpose all over again.

People have died because of the recklessness of others who they barely know, people had to suffer the rest of their lives disfigured or disabled just for that moment of carelessness of someone at the wheels. What is more cruel. This moment here, we can either flung our arms in despair and cry upon the misfortunes fate has decreed upon us, or one can choose to live as you want to and to grasp with both hands, all that you believe in. We all know at the bottom of our hearts or minds, it is Carpe Diem, but it is living to it, thats tough.

To embracing life and everything and everyone most dear and most near, around you and I.


Precision
Laurie Duesing

The day you flew in perfect arc
from your motorcycle was the same day
I broke the perfect formation of your women
at the railing, leaving behind
your grandmother and mother, to run
and jump the fence. The stop watch hanging
from my neck, suspended between gravity
and momentum, swung its perfect pendulum.
All our motion was brought to conclusion
by your broken body at rest
on the ground. Your breath never rose
to the oxygen placed on your face
and your heart never rallied
to the arms pressing your chest.
You wore the perfect clothes:
the ashy grey of death.

At the hospital they said your failure to survive
was complete. Though I never saw
the neck you perfectly broke or your body
cleanly draped by a sheet, I did see
your dead face bruising up at me
and for lack of something to touch,
I touched the stop watch
which had not died.
If any nurse or doctor had asked,
I could have told, exactly,
to the hundreths of seconds, how long
it had been since I'd seen you alive.

How long is the darkness before we get to the light

Went jogging at 12 and just finished my tutorial. I hope I will not be burnt out by any exams or assignments before the exams. The workload is starting to add up but I know I can cope with it and still have this energy... as long as I believe in achieving what I wanted to. And jogging helps too...at least it gives you that moment of clarity... although there is something "neurologically opiate"(if u noe wat i mean) about it. While I am at that, I am really thankful that Sarah can jog on fridae nite... hope she stays free and healthy haha....

I'm actually beginning to detest the readings for my lit module a little bit less after reading William Blake. Guess admidst all the proclaimed greatness (which i don't discern from his Englishness), there is something much deeper about him. He obviously has this distaste for doctrinal religion but yet held on to the ideal of man's innocence. It is easy to simplify everything by just passing judgement this dogged line of good and evil, but what is intriguing and actually I would say perplexing is to explain what constructs the deeds that people commit. A lot of it is social psychology whereby people intentionally conceal their individuality behind the crowd.

How do we preserve this consciousness of our mind... i wonder... it's like this mortal irony of being aware of ideologies that shape a mind but not being able to be free of them at the same time. Different people see the world through different lenses, and it is from these varying perspectives that each of us builds up a totally subjective construct of the world in our mind.

No two people can have the exact same thoughts. But through sharing and opening up to your friends, we learn and reform our ever transient self.

ok... poem by blake......


The Garden of Love

I laid me down upon a bank,
Where Love lay sleeping;
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Are we all lost?

Lesson learnt: Never give away a gal’s handphone number without her consent, or else risk the onslaught of her fury.

Someone from DHS and VJ called me up and arranged for an appointment regarding financial planning, even thought I insisted I am really nonchalant about finance and economics and whatsoever. I guess she just found that out after the interview, and I think I am really too tired to think carefully and made the blatant mistake of giving her my friend’s contact. (Both of them were in the same CO for 6years?)

But the conversation with her really set my mind fizzing for a while. Sometimes I really wonder what went wrong with our education (or society to a certain extent). What seems front most on almost everyone student’s mind, is to get a good degree so that it could secure a good job in the future. Most of all, I could never figure if their mind feeds and thrives on this issue of “bread and butter” or vice versa.

You could say I am idealistic or subjective to a certain extent, but I think everyone deserves to at least, enjoy their education and actually learn, instead of living the span of one brainless exam after another. Grades and certificates are always a mis-measure of the actual knowledge we internalize and gain. Imagination, not reason, is that first neuronal link our mind creates and builds upon.

Subjectively, it could be somewhat of the ideal purpose of education and I am aware that living to ideals is never possible. What I think most people fail to see, is that with commitment and discipline, dreams are not always left to dry up.

I am glad that I have rediscovered that passion to learn once more, to reclaim that once lost isle in the sea of thoughts. I guess this is the only way I can be live truthfully.

Beautiful poem i came across on a book cover......

She Tells Her Love
Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

Running

I like running at night but of course I got to get myself to jog constantly else i would be heaving and puffing all along the way. It's quite fun at times, especially when after the jog you feel so refreshed.

Happen to catch this morning show where this guy was commenting on Singaporeans always being concerned with the ends, and fail to enjoy the process. I guess we cannot live without goals but sometimes it is striving towards your goal that is interesting. And when you actually enjoy running, it’s like you feel your body going into this physiological rhythm as the ground traverse beneath your feet, and sometimes it does not matter how long or how fast you run, it is after all, having a good run.


Poem by stevie smith... which i always liked

In My Dreams
by Stevie Smith

In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,
Whither and why I know not nor do I care.
And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter,
And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air.

In my dreams they are always waving their hands and saying goodbye,
And they give me the stirrup cup and I smile as I drink,
I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going,
I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don't know what I think.

The lazy light that seeps into the half empty train carriage

On my way to NUH every morning, I sort of savor this moment when the MRT just came out of the tunnel and that morning sun just lights up the whole carriage. And at that time, its half empty, gone are the crowd and alongside it, the heaving and shoving. It’s like this private moment where you start to enjoy the last few minutes of the ride on the train (seated of course…..) Sometimes, you just close your eyes and upon feeling the bristling sunrays upon your skin, open them again, to the morning world where everything is illuminated.

Apart from that moment of tranquility, most of the time of the train was spent standing and staring into the oblivion of the blue or black or being nudged around. Many thoughts come to my mind so maybe it might be worthwhile to start writing and get into the habit of it. Sometimes I realize writing is really a discipline and it takes this effort to pen down your thoughts and not simply wax lyrical or leave the mind’s theatre of conscious thought to play out wayang kulit.

I think I have been living a dream for too long, dreaming of what I want to do, like to do, and bearing the frustrations of should haves and could haves. It’s almost to the brim of weeping for the lives your wishes never led.

It’s really a time where I wake up and really live, to do all that I have always wanted to do. There is never something truly or unrealistically impossible, but rather turned impossible or unachievable when perseverance and imagination fails. We are always afraid of losing what we have, but if we do not let go of all these binding inhibitions on our mind, I really don’t know how else conservative ways and thoughts could change, let alone create.

It is finding that commitment and discipline to cement whatever enthusiasm and imagination I have. It is the belief you hold close when you take the road less traveled, when your palm reaches out into the dark to reclaim the remnants of light. It's everything that I do, from every moment that pass from this page.