Random thoughts

Tori Amos is coming to Sydney in September.

Cannot wait.

This woman, i think kept me going through my angstiest, angriest years as a teenager. Incredible voice, often heart-rending, perculiar but personal lyrics left open to interpretation...you never really know whether you've quite figured it out even after the 18th time you might have heard a song from her.

But oh so identifiable especially when in my teens...

Girl--
"And in the doorway
They stay and laugh
As violins fill with water
Screams from the bluebells
Can't make them go away
Well I'm not seventeen
But I've cuts on my knees
Falling down
As the winter takes one more cherry tree
Rushin' rivers thread so thin limitation
Dreams with the flying pigs turbid blue
And the drugstores too safeIn their coats
Anda in their do'sYeah smother in our hearts
A pillow to my dots
One day maybe
One day
One day she'll be her own"

I kinda see her as the Madonna of confessional alternative-piano-pop-rock. If there is such a thing, she's definitely it.

----

I need to sit down and write. Write properly. For myself, figure out things. Submit things. Create things. Just create and think for myself, for more clarity. I also understand the danger in that...in thinking, overthinking and never quite achieving. But the journey is on.

I cannot wait exams are over.

---

What is it about our puny short lives. We struggle so hard to live and then to live well and then to live at all...the whole time, we are struggling all the way to our old age and deaths. Even in death, we struggle, 'death throes'. We struggle so much...so much does seem futile. So much to learn, to accomplish, to see, to meet, to know, to create...to help...

So much futility. I cannot help but once in a while in wallow in this sense of listlessness. If, despite a lifetime of work to creating and helping...how does one ensure that there will be others to take up the baton, to keep your work going? None. There is no guarrantee there is even less surety when you place trust in people. We are so short lived and vulnerable and intrinsically so flawed.

Choices

I was thinking about this today. About how each individual chooses to lead their life. How, in the everyday, seemingly small and trivial choices, how we think, our values and belief systems guide us in this.

ie:

1) Take person who believes in Karma and gives up his or her seat for the old granny despite having had no sleep or is aching all over. It is very tempting to reassure oneself that good things come to those who do good and shrug away the sacrific, however small it is.

2) Little boy or girl puts his 50cent pocket money into the homeless guy's cardboard box and feels bigger, puffed out, that they'd done something good. And the benign parent beaming on who says, :"good boy, god will bless you."

3)People who do things that they don't really instinctively like but still do, for the sake of 'moral', 'duty'...'moral duty'. Because despite doing this instinctively unpleasant thing, God or whatever divine being will bless them. This really pains me.

4)The taken for granted assumption that blatantly religious individuals, ie: muslims, christians,buddhists,taoists,jews,bahais...etc will have understandable moral codes. I think this is ultimately what is comforting for most people. That people know or more easily have a grasp/gist of what another person will be like, in their behaviours, their choice making...christians may automatically feel comfortable with another christian because they know they both believe in the same holy book, the same god, the same commandments. (I am speaking in generalisations here)- but this general comfort factor lies in also the easier identification process with others, of say...the same race, culture, gender, age...etc.

5)People who aren't religious. are more suspicious. lol. I say this jokingly. More that, their moral codes, their belief systems are not so simple. They may be the complete opposite of a religious moral coding (which is highly unlikely) but they are more un-knowable. Religious people are suspicious of such, of someone who would casually but quite seriously say: "I don't believe in God".

6)Non-religious people. Perhaps Atheists themselves, if should choose to be moral. Aren't they more moral then, for the very principles that morality stand for and because they exercise 'free will', to enforce choices...more ethical, more just? Should then, there be a God...should he not appreciate more so the intellect and choices such people make regardless of his rules, instead of following just because "he told us " in this tome of holy words of so much controversy...transcribed so many thousand years ago?

Is the concept of Karma...and perhaps also by implication, the idea of religious moral coding and God, Judgement day...so bad if it keeps people who arent inclined to be moral or good and more 'base'...to rein themselves in? Would they be far worse, if without such possibility of divine justice hanging over their heads?

We see alot of shit happening in our world, in the name of blind faith, religious fundamentalism, blatant ignorance and arrogance and the brazen use of idealogies to champion filth, degradation and violence...but could it be much worse?

I don't like this idea, any more, nor do than I approve of this...but can this be what is keeping people in check?

Black Boots

Fuck exams.

Havent been blogging, because i've been intensely studying for the last few days for my upcoming

"JOY, OH JOY: 8 EXAMS!" Whooppeee!

Meanwhile.

1) I really want to read Fury by Salman Rushdie. AGAIN.

2) I just really want to read anything that has nothing to do with body parts, or nerves, or musculoskeletal stuff, or patients who have been traumatic accidents, have spinal cord or brain injuries...or even about sporting athletes or the grandma who fell downstairs and landed on her open wrist with a twisting motion...

NO MORE! Goddamn. unfortunately...another 2 weeks to go.

3) I want. to buy. black boots. like really hot, leather black boots. Not really with a heel I don't think. I'm not that much a heel girl. I tend to wear ballet flats alot. But black boots, for winter, with maybe a slightly chunky heel. Something warm, fits well, that I can wear with my tights/leggings/jeans.

What is it about retail therapy?

4) Also. I've read this graffitied several times, across several different types of handwriting (so assuming from different people, unless it was by a very bored someone, or just a multiple-personality- someone.)

: " I think about sex all the time during exams"

--> ok. maybe not 'all the time' was written always...but the implication was there.

Yeah. I think about sex more during exams as well. Today, I've been more stressed than usual, so...maybe not.

But i actually think, i think more about sex during study time i think. But once exams edge ominously close...maybe not that. too much desperation involved.

5)I'm feeling trapped. I felt pretty upset today. Really wanted to get away. for a while perhaps? I'd like to go back to Singapore I think...to visit. I don't think I can live there, but to visit. It's been a very, very long time.

6)I think i'm an emotional coward. I don't think people realise just how little i tell them. Or are people all the same and I'm just jibbering? Or that other people just have less to tell? I realise, that before, people had to dig or actively pry away in order for me to divulge. Or when i'm on the verge of hysterics, crumbling.

7)Libraries are comforting. Fuck going to see the counsellors, or psychologists, or self-medicated-indifference, arm-chair confessionals. Go to the library. read a good book. Good books, great authors, talking, walking characters beckon and they come alive in your head.

8)Hugs are great. From people who matter. It's great giving it back as well . But there's definitely something about being hugged by someone bigger than you are, it feels alot safer. And it is comforting.

9)Rain. and great music. and soup. Imogen Heap, and tomato soup with onion and basil and rolls, are on the brain at the moment.

10)I want more certainty in my life. Don't we all?

Heh.

My grandparents arrived from Singapore last Wednesday.

Had a bit of a chat to gramps today and he rummaged around in his bag passing me a much crumpled piece of writing which was covered in red ink.

It was a piece of mandarin essay work that I had written when I was 16 years old. Geezus. That was 6 years ago. Gramps is a scholar in classical mandarin and who had grilled me in the language despite my pathetic propensity for the said language and in which I saw no value in my early teenage years. He said to me then that he'd kept that piece for a really long time...which he must have and asked me to read it to see if I still understood it.

I scanned through it and understood most of it. But wow.

All that time ago.

I feel quite the twinge of regret though. I wish I could have put in more effort then, I never saw the point of it for the future, but I guess I see it now. And I wish I could have treasured those years more, instead of constantly fighting him, minus all those tempestuous arguments of : Why? What for?

Curiosity and Depravity

Watched Zodiac (movie) last saturday night.

Movie went perhaps more than a tad too long, is based on the murders and the investigation in the serial murderer who went by the self-titled tag: Zodiac. The Zodiac committed murders from 1968 into the early 1970s and was never charged or found guilty.

A couple of things struck me as I was walking home. I was trying to reason out, and justify why Jake Gyllenhaal's (Graysmith) character staked his life, the plausbility of his family's lives, his career, his relationship with his wife and family, to not only assauge his curiosity as to who the Zodiac was but also to ensure that the 'truth' was told, that people would know this very 'truth' and the identity of the killer, despite no official charges being brought against him.

There was no tangible benefit, such as cash, reward, recognition (which i admit he did receive much later), but during a stage of his life when it was incredibly unccertain he would be even published, his family and matrimonial relations, job were at stake..he still went ahead, driven by this force to KNOW.

So then, if humans are animals...do animals really risk everything, their lives, their potential to procreate and pass on life in order to assuage curiosity, especially for something so intangible and non-concrete? Ok, i understand the point when animals may smell track spoor, investigate human scent and traps, and hell even the dumber or even the more unlucky animals may become trapped through sheer curiosity, but those are still concrete and tangible things.

The Zodiac himself was noted to be teacher who had been charged with paedophilia. Was accused of homosexuality by a journalist who had simply written it in an article to be sensationalist but received death threats as a result. Obviously, it was a sore spot for the Zodiac and he saw it as a severe insult. What is it about being accused of homosexuality that was/is so offensive...I suppose the insult to his masculinity, his omnipotence in his ability to wield life and death with his victims, his sense of power.

And the thing with depravity? The depravity to be inclined to touch little boys and girls, to seek pleasure with animals(beastiality) and the pre-pubescent(paedophilia), to develop fetishes that far traverses the spectrum of what is normal, quirky, deviant, into the depraved. To desire sex, blood and pain and perhaps desire sex with the dead (necrophilia).

I can see one idea linking all of these: Power.

There is the shift, the attainment of power, the cycle of the desire for it, achieving it, the relinquishment or transcience and then sooner or later, the line is pushed. Power in its varying forms and expressions becomes sought after. Deviancy wanders into the realm of the depraved.

The flip side of normal.

And the coin becomes melted, or the sides being rubbed into obscurity. What is the norm, what is normal then?

And why is it that in most profiles of the most notorious murderers, serial rapists, etc...all had some kind of 'c0-deviancy'? Is that simply another way to master power, power seeking becoming more deviant...more 'creative'? I think deviant and creative could almost be the same thing in this sense.

Sorry. Just ranting.

Random thoughts

I have alot of love for my friends.

Was sitting next to one of my best friends a little while ago listening intently to a guest speaker who had travelled a long way to be there and it was obvious everyone present really respected him. The thing was, I had a great deal of difficulty to remain still and I was afflicted with the most inane desire to laugh. Laugh, bubble and boil and spurt over.

Not hysterically, just laughter, great chortling gasps. This was triggered by my friend's constantly rumbling stomache and whom i knew hadnt eaten the entire day. I had been attempting to feed her an omelette (which her mom had made for us within the span of time it took us to walk in the door, change our shoes and walk back out the door. I mean 'walk', in the relative sense...perhaps try: scramblerundashscrabble) in the car while she'd sped and cut around corners at breakneck speed in order to make the talks on time.

I remember really wanting to reach over, kiss her hair and cheeks and just wrap her up really close and laughing...while i was at it.

It's interesting. There have been times in the last 3 years when i have been incredibly upset, disturbed, unbalanced despite perhaps not showing it to most people. She was/is one of those few individuals I was simply happy being around with, it was soothing just to be around her and nothing more was needed.

Ok. so nothing lesbian about this. Though it has been said that I have tendencies. *chortle

Fretful

It's 1.32am. It's pitch black outside, at least from my window, looking out. And all i can hear is the humming from my computer's harddrive.

And all i can do, is fret.

I've been fretting all night, feeling incredibly anxious. Displaced. Like I was never meant to be here, supposed to be somewhere else, but its more frustrating because I dont know where the fuck it is I'm meant to be, or I'd like to be.

Ok wait. I actually do know, where I'd like to be. But I wonder if I actually did get there, I'd be any happier.

So perhaps, it's the hormones. It's the day. It's how the day and my mood has swung.

At 5.34pm. I had been sitting on a smoothened rock face, battered and smoothed over by countless of waves over time, I know not , how long. I had been there, relishing the sensation of legs being immersed in this crisp water. So clear, I could see tiny shells floating underneath.

It was incredible. It was great. Yet I kept continually feeling I wasn't really there, wasn't meant to be. There's somewhere else.

Where, and what the fuck is it.