CURRENTLY I'M...

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16/09/2024

Who in their right mind would invent wasabi flavoured white rabbit milk candy?
???

Dinner at Chinatown!

14/09/2024

I used to feel sad that my friends didn't view the world the way that I did. I used to feel like I wasn't surrounded by the right people. Today's dinner reunion for a friend's 18th was, as usual, tiring, but I found it strangely....comforting. There is a part of me that belongs with them too. I am reminded of how I became friends with them in the first place. Although they may not share my values, my view, my interests, they are still people I hold dear to me, in a different way. And it's nice to catch up and see that they are doing well, and to laugh with them once again.

Summer is the shortest season.

01/09/2024

September's here and the days are getting shorter and I am forced to say goodbye to the last of a carefree blue sky. Autumn is always a hard season for me to come to terms with, the painful evidence of a fading season ... but this year, I will try and see it in its own beauty and not in the shadow of Summer.

Trip to Beijing: Summer Palace and Yuanminyuan Ruins

28/07/2024

However much this trip to China was a long-awaited one, it didn't really hit me until we arrived at the airport (Daxing, like last year!!), tired, thirsty, but so very glad to be there. The

05/05/2024

"My life felt empty and unreal and I was embarrassed about its thinness, the way one might be embarrassed about wearing a stained or threadbare piece of clothing I felt like I was in danger of vanishing, though at the same time the feelings I had were so raw and overwhelming that I often wished I could find a way of losing myself altogether, perhaps for a few months, until the intensity diminished."

I am scared of vanishing. My life is so thin and shallow and someday I could just disappear and nothing would change. Every day I am living for rules that do not matter, smiling for expectations don't mean anything in the end. I drop out of a weekly commitment, but what does anyone have to care? I stop hanging out with my friends, but what do they know about everything that is going on in my head? I hang onto all these material items, keep them so dearly in my cabinet, associate with them pretty childhood memories that never existed, but what will happen to them when I die? Who will know of any of the worlds which mean so much to me? Everything will perish with me. Because what makes the brain superior to, say, that of my heart, my lungs, my intestines? I am as simple as the organs inside my body. I am saddened by just how little I really have. You say "Don't care about what others think" , but if I don't force society's rules onto me. I will find that all the meaning I found in art, in nature, in other human beings, in their eyes, in their words, in all those fake universes, I found them in the strangest places, but if I take that fatal look in the mirror, I will see that it was just ...me all along. It was just me and these empty eyes and my empty head filled with horrible thoughts all along. I was alone this whole time. I am so scared to be left alone with my own mind because I will fall into that unappeasable abyss of a black hole and then I will truly, truly, truly just disappear.

When someone ask me "So tell me about yourself" or something of the sort and offer me a rare chance to open up a little bit of my mind to them, I find myself at a loss of what to say, because there is just so much to say. It takes a lot of time to sift through what version of myself I should present, what I need to filter out, what I need to make more interesting. How much is truly my own thoughts and not just me agreeing to the general opinion of the conversation. And by then, someone else has probably joined the conversation, or it's moved on, or it's over.

It's really hard.

This sense of self, only seems to emerge when I'm alone.

Maybe it's not that strong after all. When I'm with other people, I seem to blend in with the rest, and I hate that. I want to be more ME!!!!!

"Real" music.

I grew up classically trained.

There was always this mindset of... the "real" music.

Real harmony. Serious harmony. Complex harmony. Structure. Development.

...I love classical music.

But I also love so much more.

Compared to the soundworld I grew up in, my music, on the other hand, ... was shallow. Incomplete. Spontaneous. Pretentious.

I couldn't write real music.

Not well, at least.

So I didn't.

Or if I did, I laughed it off jokingly.

Because only if I was writing "real" music would I be working hard.

Sometimes, I would secretly be a little touched by the things I wrote. I would glimpse at it for a moment, then watch everyone else moving forwards, stuff it back into my pocket, half-smile, and hurriedly return back to the "real" music.

Does all music have to be "real" music?

What even is "real" music?

Can't I stay here and enjoy the strange creations in my pocket, instead of catching up to the crowd following the open path?

Is there another path?

I won't be able to forge my own path, but I hope I can at least open up another perspective to my view of this beautiful landscape.

That's a start.

That's why I'll continue to work hard to write my shallow, spontaneous music.

The sky at night is clear enough for me to see the stars.
In the house down the road she plays the piano.
I'm reminded of the special days by their fireworks.
On sunny days I can see the clouds from my window
and the light glints off the cars and the rooftops.
Such is my quiet life.

10/12/2023

What's one thing I'm good at?

That I have sense of self. Something that comforts me is that I trust that no matter how lost, empty, lifeless my environment might become, I will always have my mind to be safe in. That I know myself, I believe, and I have a strong core. I have morals that I will stand to, and though they may change, I will never lose my sense of self.

I think the best thing I can do for myself is to protect these values I have, keep this sense of self within me. I hope I can keep it safe and never lose it in this society which is eager to mold each of us into another, defined form.

As someone once said, "I have a strong sense of who I am but no idea of where I'm going."

I am always waiting for the day I meet someone who I can truly open my mind up to. That I can finally bring out the conversations I've been having in my mind for my whole life, and have them with another, separate mind. Whether that person comes as a friend, lover, teacher, junior, enemy... (maybe not enemies), I don't really care. Then sometimes I think, maybe that isn't possible. Perhaps the only entity which I can have these conversations with will only ever be the one and only me. Maybe that's just how I am, how we as humans are.

Isn't that cool? How every person you meet has an entire universe brimming full of life inside them?

I wonder what other people's worlds are like.

I wonder if the world inside my head is like everyone else's.

I've been trying all my life to do this, to open up my mind to someone. I guess that's what I'm trying to do with you. Sometimes, I choose wrongly, and people don't listen, or won't listen. It's pretty scary.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking I know people. I try to understand people, to guess what their world is like based off my observations of their behaviour, and my interactions with them. And I don't know if my judgement it correct or not, and I think it's bad for me to try and do so, though I can't help it. Is it a bad thing to do?

Should I be telling people this?
Should I be telling you this?
Or should I just keep it inside me?

Desert

Come the eventide horizon which blossoms red, the winds which pass by to whisper the story of the dunes, the same tale now as that in eons passed. Come the cooling of the sand, the joys which black skies and moonlight bring. You become woven in this place, the land spun from the softest of golds. You become anchored in this moment, that which speaks the language of the heart.

prelude

07/01/2024

this morning, i looked up from my desk and saw that my suncatcher, for the first time in several months, was diffracting light.

seeing the kaleidoscope of colours against the bedroom walls felt like a glimpse of the warmer days ahead.

spring, please come quickly this year.

The Moth

04/10/2023

"flying swan"

...is what i always thought of.

they say
it lives forever in shadow and yearns
forever for light,
blinded by love.

brown paper wings, charred
by flames of fatal attraction.

yet it does not feel the pain.
faithfully, it embraces the candlelight.

quiet, humble.

earthly creatures.

silent paper wings...
in its flight of death, there is some kind of raw elegance.

treasure

the wind
touches your hair, stretches your shadow

you tell me
there is a treasure in your heart

"...please don't ruin it"
you say

as you lead me,
somewhere faraway, and I am fearless.

but the wind
the wind is rising, and it's time to go back.

look,
the world out here shines bright.

yet,
why do I still sing your song?

wait for me
I'll meet you at the end of the path.

but the wind
the wind is rising

and the wind
the wind is too strong

and where is your shadow?
and where is your heart?
and where is your treasure?

and I
can't seem to find you anymore.