The Castaway

I trod onto the hard sands, castaway but not lost.
Flung like a rock out of a mean kid's catapult, useless
wishbone of brittle twig,
I found my way to where I was to go:

away. My ship has changed its course but it doesn't matter. I think
I will be back aboard: I can swim, I can craft a ship;
in this place that is the wake
of that ship;

this place that can hold possibilities like hearts
hold dreams. Letting go only in
passing waking
but never freeing.

On this island
perhaps I will rest first, maybe not.
There is actually much to do, things to make,
fish, birds, trees, rocks. Slowly

this island will become a port of call
and the ship will come and I will board
again. But maybe I'll rest first, daydream,
the seas, after all, were rough going.


Maze

This maze is huge, I have walked here
all my life but only now I see the marble walls,
the floors covered in aquamarines
so bright they cut my soles, the air thick
with bees and their honey-tinged stings.

So painful. But I walk, knowing, naked; searching
for my clothes and shoes, and smooth salve like a blind
beggar thrashing through thorny undergrowth.
There is momentary respite: sometimes I find
rags and dirty water.

I am lost, but I know that it's only for now
and I will reach where I have to go like the
compass will point North eventually. But I
have no compass and I can only
wander. And believe these words

that I say to myself. In the maze
I am hapless but when I'm finally done
with it I will be beautiful, a child resting far away
from this maze so huge
it is the distance between two lovers' hearts.


in these recent days life has been rather boring and i have been rather bored... thus for some reason i need to create, to write, and this is what i've come up with... it's an urge, a whim i have...

i think it's here to vindicate my existence...
or something like that...

sweet nostalgia...

that's the reason for my latest flight of absence from these pages...

i remember how some games used to entertain me to no end as a child... how i would stay up far later than what my parent's liked to endlessly immerse myself in those realities...

well they're all back... while surfing around one day i found www.the-underdogs.org and there i found those games that i used to play as a child...

(there are some that think i am sophisticated beyond the act of enjoying computer games.
well.
some people are mistaken.)

and thus i have negelcted to write... my adventures in a faraway galaxy have proved to have a great hold on my attention...

and still there's more to reminisce...

i remember how i used to read endlessly... and now it seems i'm at it again... i sped through Stephen King's Misery... and now i'm lost somewhere in Kafka's Metamorphosis... and to top it all off...

i just found out that good 'ol national library actually holds the entire Sandman series...

well in other words it may come to pass that i don't write at all for some time to come...

well well well...

school's open again!

well for some of us at least...

have fun everybody... you all must come back and tell me what's the entire university thing like...

i mean like if everybody has been saying that's what we should be doing and where we should be headed for then it must be something right...?

err... right...?

anyways...

i have read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince...
and you all have to finish with it fast so i can blab it all out of me...
and we can all bitch about the latest developments...

hmm... there seems to be nothing much to talk about nowadays...
i mean... like the most interesting thing that happened to me (or that i think i should be writing up here) concerns my journey home from work one saturday evening....

so i walk into the elevator... which happens to be the penultimate obstacle on my ardous journey home from work...
the time... for the record... is somewhere near eleven... pm... and i have spent close to two hours and a half on public transport...

so i walk into the elevator... and peer into the cracked mirrors that are the walls of the elevator and that the designers must have rather erroneously thought added a touch of class to the decor... and scrunch up my eyes and peer into the shards trying to make out my own reflection...

and i realise that my hair has been a veritable mess all the way home...

oh another thing to blab about in my rather plebeian life...
i have rediscovered my penchant for reading (which was last seen being thrown rather unceremoniously overboard somewhere near September last year...) which has seen my devour Brave New World and other books in the last week...

did someone ever tell me that Brave New World was funny... i thought not... it was thoroughly disturbing... brilliant, but disturbing nonetheless... it evokes a sense of fear in me... something deep and foreboding... in that vista of the future so incredible yet frighteningly an utter possibility...

Terry Pratchett was good though... it wasn't ha-ha-fall-on-the-floor-clutch-your-sides-laughing funny but it was good... giggly good...

then there's Stephen King... which is just... well...
plain disturbing... on an epic level...

looking at what i've written so far... i'm must say i'm rather surprised at my lack of endless, mindless chatter...

it reminds me of something i saw in someone else's blog...

"I want me back!"

i remember my writing used to be at times thoroughly cheesy, irritatingly whiny, divinely inspired, not-so-divinely inspired (meaning the result of desperate scrabblings for something else to think about during night study sessions), mindless, or sometimes just plain mad...

but it used to be pretty interesting...
(i like to think...)
and i got a kick out of writing...
(now that i know for sure...)

(well actually i still do get a kick out of it but it comes sort of delayed now... like only after a few bad spurts at writing then do i get the kick of it and then it all flows...)

(like now. )

(well it seems "like now" complete with period wasn't at all a good choice... i'm stuck...)
(ok let's just assume i'm writing the conventional way, and you can just skip all the stuff in parentheses and carry on... so as i was saying...)

and i got a kick out of writing...

and it seems now i'm quite stuck into a corner, parentheses or not, and i think i'll just call it a day...

not bad a length... actually...
come to think of it...

hello...

well i was just watching the Oprah show on The Desperate Housewives (not the desperate housewives that she searches all America for) and i just realised that Plath, in so much of her poetry meditating on women and post-marital life, was so far ahead of her time and society...

like wow...

i imagine that she too was once the picture perfect desperate housewife... a veritable celebrity in English poetic circles married to the wildly successful Ted Hughes from America... in a crumbling marriage and utterly trapped between the committments of her as a mother, wife and poet...

and she took her own life too...

i do well believe that the series will aid in the understanding of some issues... and in other circumstances lead the reader to interesting questions and discussions on the concerns of Plath... but since i'm writing this i might as well leave a warning to anybody reading this... that the similarities drawn between Plath and The Desperate Housewives are dangerous hypotheses to postulate... something that i in my currently non-acedemic employment can do with reckless abandon....

so if you're actually studying... well exercise caution...

and in the New Paper today...

A school for children with below-average IQ and learning disabilities was subjected to complaints and requests from parents to remove and replace articles that had come in contact with a certain teacher, on the grounds that as a homosexual, and involved in a public indecency charge, he was putting their children were in danger of being infected with the HIV virus. This was after he was issued a warning by the police for an act of public indecency in which he was involved in sexual acts with another man, which he claims was consensual.

i try not to be guilty of media conditioning in the above lines...
it shocks me when i read in the paper that parents "tear down the toilets"... there is clear exaggeration of the extent of aggression and even an implication of non-existent violence on the part of the parents...

When one is charged with a duty as important as passing on information, i believe that one should exercise prudence and caution in not distorting truth and fact. It is saddening to see that for some journalists this prudence has taken second place to writing the perfect attention grabbing headline, replete with alliteration. But I speculate, I emote, I imply, and i exaggerate. But I can; can they?

i have no idea whether the idiocy of parents or the flagrant disregard of journalistic ethics as seen in the paper disgusts me more...

As parents of children who have had the ill-fortune to be born with learning disabilities it is rather ironic, even shocking that rather than maximise their own knowledge to better mentor their children they remain stuck in such baseless and backward assumptions. For some of these children their lives will be lived in innocence, given their special needs; yet it somehow seems impossible, given the perceptions that their parents hold.

and still this human world rends and tears the compassionate bystander... for after all can we blame these people who would go any lengths to safeguard their children in these uncertain times where biological agents and viruses are real threats...?

ello everybody...

i think i'm settled on the colour now...
it reminds me of autumn... i like it...

haha...

i can't write a thing... it's almost hilarious the way i infuriate myself trying to fill up endless rows of empty staves...
but i think i'll take a breather for now...

there's music playing at the back of my head... and i swear one of these days i'll finally get it down... not exactly what's been going on and on for so long... but fair enough...

i remember once arguing to a literature lecturer that the artist will forever be in a state of despair for he will never see with his physical eyes what he sees in his mind's eye... that the artistic process will set, fulfil, and even exceed the expectations of the audience... but will never ever be enough for the artist himself...

that... to me now... sounds amazingly passionate... and hardly true...

i've given up on trying to write down all that goes on in my head... that music which i think is the most beautiful in its utter elusiveness... it's not that i've become less of a musician... i think it's that i've become more aware of a simple truth...

that i'm simply human...

surprisingly... that delights me...

well as you all can see... the place now looks dramatically different...

well leave comments and tell me what you think ok...
and oh yar i drew the graphic myself...

ah... goodness... it's been awhile now hasn't it...

hello there...

a train ride home today saw me watch two kids playing on the train... it was one of those old playthings almost nobody knows of nowadays... a tube of gum... you squeeze a little out onto a tiny straw, and then blow and it inflates into a little bubble...

the bubble's pretty hardy... might last for even a day if you're careful with it... and i used to love the game...

but i got frustrated...
those bubbles lie...

they put up pretences... give hope of certainty when they live not so much longer than their watery counterparts...
i suppose that's the reason why it never lasts past childhood... only in the foolishness of childhood... before one learns that things when lost are painful... can a child play and watch his bubble turn to a sticky little lump and carry on... fortunately and thankfully nonchalant...

i would rather forget those capricious toys... move on to real bubbles...
come from a seeming nowhere and go just as easily... no danger of loss when no bond is formed...

but those bubbles... that you could touch and feel soft in your hands... smell that gum fresh from the tube...
see the colours stretch and dance on their surface...

and soon learn that nothing lasts forever... as you frantically search for the miniscule aperture through which your bubble dies... you helpless as the colours compress like an oil slick after the rain running down a drain... the strains entangling into a knot... useless as a plaything...

then the childish mind forgets it and blows another and another...

but we're no longer children are we...?

anyways...

planning on getting a new flute... i think i've outgrown the one that's been following me for the past seven years...
mildly excited over it...
haha... it seems to open up so much more possibilities...
can't wait...

but of course it's 'can't wait' in a grown up sort of way so there's not going to be any knots in my stomach prior to purchase... no whining and are-we-there-yet's...

goodness it's my own money...
of course i can feel the pinch...

but still...

haha... goodie...
can't wait...

hello there everybody...

i went to watch a movie yesterday... alone...
it was the 9.30 pm show...
and the process of buying a ticket went something like this...

ME: Hi, can I have one ticket for "Infection" please?

UNLUCKY GIRL AT BOX OFFICE NINE-O'CLOCK SHIFT: One?

ME: Yes one... (looks expectantly UGABONS)

UGABONS: ...err... OK.
(UGABONS tries to maintain an even voice and almost succeeds. She unfortunately has less control over her facial muscles as she gapes in bewilderment at ME.)
(UGABONS looks like CHIMP seeing self in mirror for the first time.)
(Hands out one ticket)
Eight-fifty please.
(Thought bubble appears: "Single (obviously!). How sad." ME with superior intuition undoubtedly notices this.)

ME: (While making payment, and deciding whether to salvage reputation or preserve dignity) Yeah, err, thanks.

(CHIMP stares as embarrased ME exits stage right.)

so anyway i go for a walk while waiting for the movie to start...
it was a spur of the moment decision see... so time management was obviously out the window...

so anyway i come back in about half an hour's time... and i enter the cinema...

then i realize i entered the wrong one so i leave looking like desperate blind date guy who's been stood up...

i enter the cinema... the correct one this time... and get to my seat...
i look around and see that it's half filled...
the only people there are a group of boiseterous teenagers... probably all nicely paired up...

and plenty of couples...

now the box office girl's chimpy expression really makes sense to me...

so i sit through a movie i hardly understand in a freezing theatre...
half the time wondering when it's gonna end...
and the other half wondering why there's so much green goo on the screen...

the latter's the former half and the former's the latter half...

go figure...

and nobody is to say i need a life...
at all...

ok let's have a second go at this...

i was writing about how i seem to have difficulty writing anything that's of any worth nowadays...
and i looked at what i had written and got so turned off i deleted it all...

so here we go again...

yes... it's rather like living through a slow onset of dementia... just that hopefully it's a two-year stint that i can recover from...
i wonder what my efficacy with the language seems to have dissipated into... i wonder whether my skills of analysis are still as sharp as before...
and i remember how it felt like to be eighteen, on the verge of the world... and now i'm a year older... and suddenly on the verge of the world isn't such an enviable place to be...

but then i think that as another year passes i'll hit my second decade...
and i sort of like that idea...

i think as i approach the end of my teenage years the infamous teenage mood swings come into full blast again... an encore performance right before a nice blossoming end...

it seems like a weird time to stop and take stock of life now...
but life's good...

i suppose one day i'll be as sharp as i ever was...

can one lar...