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S
19 April 2012 @ 10:50 pm
i got a perfect body
but sometimes i forget

(folding chair, regina spektor)

i always stop and listen when she sings "i got a perfect body". then a sort of diagram of the perfect body flashes through my head, exactly the right proportions, a pleasing symmetry, flawlessly toned, and i frown because wow regina, that's a bold claim to make. how does she know her body is perfect? sometimes i think: hm, maybe it's so perfect that wherever she goes people just come up to her and tell her.

i got a perfect body
'cuz my eyelashes catch my sweat
yes they do, they do


then it hits me, every single time i listen to this song. in the next line it hits me that the image of 'perfect' reigning in my mind is just one - practically unreal - way of perfect the body can be. i love this song, it slaps me in the face with my superficiality every single time. we all inhabit perfection. it's a sentiment a number of my religious friends express more often, that we needn't doubt that we are perfect just the way we are, because of the way we were made, which is to say by god. that we are so beautifully constructed that our eyelashes catch our sweat, that our bodies do what we need them to in the most strangely graceful of ways, is all of our perfection.

sunday, it was the day after shao yuan's national competition, we went to visit great-grandfather after yuany's math lesson, it was a ten-minute walk from the car to the grave, he was so exhausted. it makes no difference that in december 2010 the top of his head finally reached the height that mine did and then surpassed it - he's my baby brother, especially when he stumbles to his last step, holds out his arms and asks for a piggyback ride. i carry him the last bit of the way. after we were done hanging out with great-grandfather, after we had bowed over the last joss sticks and planted them in the dirt of his grave and it was time to go, yuan hopped onto my back like he used to all the time when we were little (me little and him littler than me). as i stepped easily over anthills and random roots, shifting his weight on my hips from time to time, i was struck deep with the truth of it, my 'perfect' legs aren't longer or skinnier, my perfect legs are: strong enough to carry brother's weight with mine through the forest.

 
 
S
10 April 2012 @ 02:12 am
shao wei says: (PM 11:43:53)
it's lit though, i feel so disappointed to have it as my worst subject. but i guess i can get it better soon and then it wont matter... :(

kevin says: (PM 11:44:29)
plz. lit as your worst subject
kevin says: (PM 11:44:30)
join the club
kevin says: (PM 11:44:44)
except guess what
kevin says: (PM 11:44:53)
your membership is a trial period
kevin says: (PM 11:45:00)
whereas i have a lifetime subscription
shao wei says: (PM 11:45:48)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


shao wei says: (PM 11:48:55)
... Therefore, the Cold War underpinned US economic decisions that brought recovery and growth to components of the global economy.

kevin says: (PM 11:49:30)
your writing convinces me that style is a merit in history
kevin says: (PM 11:49:36)
i could say the same things and get a lower mark

kevin the genius is a goodass friend. his nonsense actually makes me feel better. too funny

latika's theme from slumdog millionaire has been keeping me company/calm/sane. it's repeated exactly 90 times : )

i still feel bruised from wanqi's elbow, but, as always, no bruise. that aggravates me about my body, that invisibility of the pain
 
 
mood: happyhappy
 
 
S
08 April 2012 @ 03:24 am
i am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly i know a hawk from a handsaw

now hamlet, where's polonius?
at supper.
at supper? where?
not where he eats, but where he is eaten; a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. your worm is your only emperor for diet; we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots; your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table - that's the end.
alas, alas!
a man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
what dost thou mean by this?
nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
where is polonius?


In Hamlet, love is first invoked during Hamlet’s earliest appearance, by the new king Claudius, when he says he loves Hamlet as a “dearest father” does towards his “son”. Claudius thus reconfigures in his speech the true relationship between them: that of uncle and nephew, stepfather and stepson, and most importantly, two people who actually want the other killed. In this way, love is shown to exist as a falsehood. In the same episode, Hamlet declares, “frailty, thy name is woman” even as he describes the love his late father had towards his mother Gertrude, exemplified in that “he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly”. He is shaken now by the fickleness of Gertrude’s affections, that she would marry the late king’s usurper so soon after his death. In his soliloquy, he condemns it with a sob, saying it was done with “O most wicked speed”, illustrating how the characters, society and events of the play leave the idea of love tainted. This scene depicts the love Hamlet had held for his father and how that love has been impinged on, thus showing how love is left with no place in Hamlet’s new world.

 
 
mood: sadsad
 
 
S
03 April 2012 @ 11:41 pm
'As details emerged about a U.S. soldier's horrific slaughter of 16 slumbering Afghan civilians, many Americans were repelled. The massacre was dubbed an Afghan My Lai, and U.S. officials in Afghanistan braced for a repeat of the nationwide riots that killed over three dozen people, including four Americans, in the wake of the February burning of Korans at a U.S. base. yet even as Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at what he called "satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies," the anticipated uprising never materialized. The disparity in reaction has mystified many. Why would a nation revolt over the inadvertent burning of Korans by U.S. forces yet treat with relative indifference a calculated massacre by a U.S. serviceman?

The answer can be found in how widespread lethal violence has become in Afghanistan. To Afghans, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales' alleged murderous rampage is little different from the allied air strikes that have accidentally targeted wedding parties, schools and children herding sheep. The Taliban have also made acts of violence - floggings, beheadings, hangings - commonplace. "If we protested for each killing, then we would have protests two times every day," says religious leader Abdul Rahim Shah Ghaa.

Attacks on the Koran, though, whether accidental, as in February, or deliberate, as when a Florida pastor burned a Koran a year ago, are relatively rare. And Afghans want to keep it that way. "It's our red line," says university student Basir Abdul. "If we don't protest the burning of the Koran today, tomorrow the foreigners will enter our houses and rape our women." In a country riven by tribal loyalties, Islam transcends ethnic identity. It's the one thing all Afghans can agree on. "Of course we condemn [the massacre]," says Shah Ghaa. "But it was only 16 people. Even if it were 1,000 people, it wouldn't compare to harming one word of the Koran." In a country where death stalks freely, defending the afterlife becomes paramount.'

- Aryn Baker, with Walid Fazly/Kabul

(TIME World Briefing)


every day you are loved, every day you are wanted, every day you have hope, every day you have hope, every new day you have sunlight on your skin, hair, in the lamp of your eyes. every day you have a myriad ways to go. every day you have somewhere to go, if you need, somewhere to retreat to, wherever it may be, a cool and dim and soft-blue space you can crawl into and lay your head down for safety. before you lay your head down a final time, all these days wait to be beautiful for you.

 
 
S
20 March 2012 @ 01:07 am

 
 
S
02 March 2012 @ 04:13 am
Q- says: (AM 03:57:32)
shh
Q- says: (AM 03:57:45)
shh
Q- says: (AM 03:58:26)
except the sea urchins
Q- says: (AM 03:58:30)
they are like street urchins
Q- says: (AM 03:58:33)
except
Q- says: (AM 03:58:34)
sea
Q- says: (AM 03:58:35)
urchins

Q- says: (AM 03:59:25)
don't be a bluebird
Q- says: (AM 03:59:28)
be a sunbird


The sunbirds and spiderhunters are a family, Nectariniidae, of very small passerine birds. There are 132 species in 15 genera. The family is distributed throughout Africa, southern Asia and just reaches northern Australia. Most sunbirds feed largely on nectar, but also take insects and spiders, especially when feeding young. Flower tubes that bar access to nectar because of their shape, are simply punctured at the base near the nectaries. Fruit is also part of the diet of some species. Their flight is fast and direct on their short wings.

The sunbirds have counterparts in two very distantly related groups: the hummingbirds of the Americas and the honeyeaters of Australia. The resemblances are due to convergent evolution brought about by a similar nectar-feeding lifestyle.[1] Some sunbird species can take nectar by hovering like a hummingbird, but usually perch to feed.

(from wikipedia)

and every day i am thankful for this, that you are not so not-okay that you aren't okay.

 
 
S
26 February 2012 @ 10:05 pm
18:20 Marcus says
Shao which lit question are you doing?
18:20 Shao says
um
i don't know :)
18:21 Marcus says
have you seen the questions haha
18:57 Shao says
oops
no
D:
20:55 Shao says
i'm doing lit tomorrow
20:59 Marcus says
haha i'll try to finish tonigh!!
but i'll prbly have to finish tmr
you done w econs?
20:59 Shao says
nope... starting now...
20:59 Marcus says
shao......
do your damn work haha
20:59 Marcus says
you make me feel hardworking
21:00 Shao says
hahahahahahaha
shut up.
 
 
mood: amusedamused
 
 
S
26 February 2012 @ 06:53 pm
cry for a bit then give up crying. why hurt, unless the hurt can rip past your ribs and through your heart, force your heart into something it hasn't known how to be, something better. if not then, whatever, just crawl into bed and sleep.

when i was young i was afraid of the dark. when night fell and i wanted to go upstairs into unlit rooms i had to look for kakak, and we'd go together.

i was so afraid of the dark that it was inconceivable that i'd ever be unafraid of the dark.

i remember asking kakak why she wasn't afraid. she laughed and said, "there's nothing to be afraid of." i said, "it's sooo scary." and she said, "when you grow older, you just won't be afraid either." clinging on to her hand, walking bravely only because she was beside me, i tried to imagine it: walking through the darkness fearless. i couldn't. "i will be afraid forever." "i thought i'd be afraid forever, too," said kakak, "when i was younger. but one day, i wasn't, and then i never was again."

i don't remember when i started being able to walk into an unlit room without my heart hammering in my chest, wrist, ears, but it did happen.

(even without being able to imagine it, i had known it was going to happen, that i wouldn't be stuck being afraid forever. somehow kakak's confidence let me know.

thinking about it today, i wonder why i keep thinking this is it for me. that i'm stuck as the horrible person i am today. maybe as we grow and change, some things i don't like about myself will fall away too.

but looking at people, and the people around me, and the imperfections they are stuck with... i don't think so because everyone else is bad and unhappy too.)
 
 
S
25 February 2012 @ 12:06 am
it's just been a long day.

if you will be silent, i will stop talking too, i think.

-

why do we make each other feel unwanted? is it because we do not want each other? (he doesn't want me, he doesn't want her, she is a repository of un-want. i could draw arrows for us, sketch out our web.

i feel sick.)
 
 
S
24 February 2012 @ 01:22 am
charlotte: "there are no commitments, only bargains. and they have to be made again every day. you think making a commitment is it. finish. you think it sets like a concrete platform and it'll take any strain you want to put on it. you're committed. you don't have to prove anything. in fact you can afford a little neglect, indulge in a little bit of sarcasm here and there, isolate yourself when you want to. underneath it's concrete for life. i'm a cow in some ways, but you're an idiot."

charlotte: "remember what i said."

henry: "what was that? oh... yes. no commitments. only bargains. the trouble is i don't really believe it. i'd rather be an idiot. it's a kind of idiocy i like. 'i use you because you love me. i love you so use me. be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual... your credit is infinite, i'm yours, i'm committed...' it's no trick loving somebody at their best. love is loving them at their worst. is that romantic? well, good. everything should be romantic."

tom stoppard, the real thing
 
 
S
11 February 2012 @ 09:03 pm

prayer of st francis

make me a channel of your peace
where there is hatred, let me bring your love
where there is injury, your pardon, lord
and where there's doubt, true faith in you

make me a channel of your peace
where there's despair in life, let me bring hope
where there is darkness, only light
and where there's sadness, ever joy

oh, master, grant that I may never seek
so much to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
to be loved as to love with all my soul

make me a channel of your peace
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
in giving of ourselves that we receive
and in dying that we are born to eternal life

Tags:
 
 
location: 1.3268,103.8178
 
 
S
27 January 2012 @ 12:36 am
12.22am, i'm sitting in a corner of my room surrounded by used tissues, balancing my computer and foolscap pad on a footstool, feeling almost completely shitty.

okay admittedly i feel much better now... i am on a diet of ho yan hor herbal tea, peppermint chocolate, bread and dried apricots. and i have gr88 friends :)

shao wei says: (AM 12:05:03)
shd i find food to eat? (bread and chocolte) or save it for tomorrow?

kevin says: (AM 12:05:05)
tmr damn long day for me grrr. haha welcome!
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:07)
i feel so shit

kevin says: (AM 12:05:09)
o.o well
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:11)
ahahhaha exciting

kevin says: (AM 12:05:14)
if you eat it now you cant eat it tmr?
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:16)
i miss my boyfriend: (

kevin says: (AM 12:05:18)
i mean
kevin says: (AM 12:05:20)
you have nothing to eat tmr?
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:20)
yeah!! sucks

kevin says: (AM 12:05:27)
man
kevin says: (AM 12:05:29)
amke yourself something
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:29)
um i have stuf to eat i think but not as good

kevin says: (AM 12:05:29)
make*
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:38)
sorry kevin i'm really shitty and whiny this evening :'(

kevin says: (AM 12:05:42)
oh then eat the not so good stuff (:
kevin says: (AM 12:05:44)
dont worry shao its ok
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:49)
but i want to feel better now :'(

kevin says: (AM 12:05:52)
its what your friends do when your boyfriend is presumably sleeping
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:55)
awww
shao wei says: (AM 12:05:57)
HAHAHAH
shao wei says: (AM 12:06:05)
oh gaah. ily kevster
:')
shao wei says: (AM 12:06:42)
ok brb food time
 
 
mood: cheered up
music: rachael yamagata, ingrid michaelson
 
 
S
31 December 2011 @ 10:26 pm
"What are you doing here, Papa?" I murmured.

When he answered, something closed over the despair on his face, like the blow of a shutter closing on a shameful scene.

"Don't you see? I'm smoking..." he replied.

And he lit a cigarette.

Paseo, by Jose Donoso

/

People live together, parents and children, husband and wife, but don't they know that communication is only an illusion, that in the last analysis each of us is locked up in his own secret?

A Letter About Emilia, by Adolfo Bioy Casares

/

Suddenly the moon came out from behind a black cloud, lighting up a weather-beaten white wall. I stopped in my tracks, blinded by that whiteness. A faint breeze stirred the air and I could smell the fragrance of the tamarind trees. The night was murmurous with the sounds of leaves and insects. The crickets had bivouacked among the tall weeds. I raised my eyes: up there the stars were also camping out. I thought that the whole universe was a grand system of signals, a conversation among enormous beings. My own actions, the creak of a cricket, the blinking of a star, were merely pauses and syllables, odd fragments of that dialogue. I was only one syllable, of only one word. But what was that word? Who was uttering it? And to whom? I tossed my cigarette onto the sidewalk. It fell in a glowing arc, giving off sparks like a miniature comet.

I walked on, slowly, for a long while. I felt safe and free, because those great lips were pronouncing me so clearly, so joyously. The night was a garden of eyes.

The Blue Bouquet, by Octavio Paz
 
 
S
13 November 2011 @ 05:42 pm
i dreamt that one day we attended an engagement party

and the next day we got an invitation to the same person's funeral party. i dreamt we cycled up to the small bar it was held at, and everyone jumped off their bikes and went inside, but my bike leant against someone else's and they both fell, and i knocked the rest over when i tried to make them stand again. it felt like hours. messing with the bikes underneath the streetlamp, i hated them a little bit and quietly for leaving me outside.

when i went inside the proprietor was in the middle of reproaching them for leaving me outside. i took my seat amidst them and someone said, "what are you talking about? look, she's right here." she threw up her hands and went away shaking her head; when she next passed by she nodded at me and passed me a drink. strangely enough it tasted and warmed like gratitude. i didn't know who she was.

i dreamt that i left the funeral party with my mum. my brother and father left separately on a plane. we wandered the parking lot for such a long time that i forgot we were looking for the car.

when we did get into the car we drove off while i was in the middle of closing the car door. i held on to it as we exited the grey light of the parking lot and were expelled into the nighttime and intermittent orange glow of the streetlights. i made feeble attempts to close it, which repeatedly failed. finally i said please stop the car door won't close!! she was going faster and faster. i hung on to the handle until she pulled to a stop. i tumbled out, pushing the door wide open. something brushed the back of my leg as i did so. standing on the grass i looked faintly at the car and her inside it. she was reaching over to pull in the thick sleeve of a sodden sweater. the pattern was so awful. i barely wanted to get back inside. but i did, and she began to drive, and i pulled the door properly shut.
 
 
S
08 November 2011 @ 12:00 am
the pictures i'd take -

girls around the dining table, mouths falling open and eyes screwed shut in laughter

a circle of crossed legs, pillows, hushed and raised voices and the swell of the quilt

morning streaming in over the red bedsheets and bodies arranged in sleep horizontally across the bed

the view out the bus thirteen

the whiteswirl clouds hanging fixed in the strip of far-away blue sky. the strip of white-dotted blue sea beneath; the ships

the wave claiming the overturned crab

the featherleaves of the tops of trees against a misty burst of cloud

sunlight shade sunlight sunlight shade

mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and aunts and nieces and uncles and cousins and clattering calls and feet pattering wetly across sand, grass, concrete path

empty stretches of road

aeroplanes huge in the nearby sky

condensation beading on the sturdy glass of amber you can count on

bicycles falling

bicycle speeding past bicycle, bicycles keeping pace, bicycles swerving

backs (shirts smooth against knobs of spine) hunched over still and in motion at the same time

browning reddening topsides of arms

fading yellow distance markings embedded in tarmac

trees

puddles

late afternoon sunlight slanting in through the windows of the bus, lighting up the faces necks shoulders of everyone on the other side

boys playing fake soccer and the guitar, curling up asleep on the couch

stepping off the bus at lucky plaza keeping close to the sound coiling out from jukebox mouth

scrubbing bicycle grease off into blackening soapsuds

the bedroom again, tired boys clustered around makeshift card table

empty ice cream wrappers going in the bin, love you papa, goodnight
 
 
music: falling or flying - grace potter
 
 
S
02 November 2011 @ 11:12 pm
But they didn't come, and so I continued to sit there hour after hour watching the unrelenting rain slosh against the glass, thinking of our life together, Lotte's and mine, how everything in it was designed to give a sense of permanence, the chair against the wall that was there when we went to sleep and there again when we awoke, the little habits that quoted from the day before and predicted the day to come, though in truth it was all just an illusion, just as solid matter is an illusion, just as our bodies are an illusion, pretending to be one thing when really they are millions upon millions of atoms coming and going, some arriving while others are leaving us forever, as if each of us were only a great train station, only not even that since at least in a train station the stones and the tracks and the glass roof stay still while everything else rushes through it, no, it was worse than that, more like a giant empty field where every day a circus erected and dismantled itself, the whole thing from top to bottom, but never the same circus, so what hope did we really have of ever making sense of ourselves, let alone one another?

great house, nicole krauss
 
 
S
01 November 2011 @ 11:35 pm
these walls are paper thin and everyone hears every little sound. everyone's a voyeur it's them watching me watch them watch me right now. they're shaking hands they're shaking in their shoes oh lord don't shake me down. everyone wants to move them and half of everyone else moves around. it's been agreed the whole world stinks so no one's taking showers any more. laugh hard, it's a long ways to the bank paper thin walls, modest mouse

these days pass like a boat on the water.

yuan, moulding plastic in trays and tracking parts down across singapore, says you end up where you start out, even though in between is a whole journey of digging deep and far, deeper and further. mumma says when you end up back there it is a different place. even if it is the same place, because only the long journey has let you know how right this place is.