How We Sometimes are like Stars, or Something Along the Lines of Realisation.

The two of us are like stars. We are both fixed in position on the map of the night sky, forever kept at distance from one another. Even when the Earth rotates on its axis, orbits around the Sun, our spots in the sky don't change. From Earth's perspective, even when we move from one end of the sky to the other, we remain apart. The one following behind tries to break this order, to catch up with the one in front, but it's running an endless marathon.
Sometimes it gets cloudy. Either one star gets blocked from sight, and the other one wishes upon itself for the clouds to clear. It doesn't even mind falling if that would fulfill its wish for the other to shine. But sooner or later the clouds always clear to reveal the other. And then again I am reminded how you're always in sight, but always apart.

I Lick My Teeth.

I am looking out of the window, and the streets look so inviting at night that I am tempted to go for a walk. Something's preventing me from doing so, and it feels a little like caution, and it feels a little like Bessie's advice against staying out late. If I close the window the temptation might go away.

So instead, I decide to write an entry in this blog, because it's about the only thing that has the patience to tolerate my ramblings. I appreciate it in ways it doesn't and cannot even realise.
O why is my blog inanimate? I lament its indifference. ):

And narcissism decides to get the better of me, and I decide to make a list.

5 things you never knew, or already know, about me.

1. I like painting my nails.
I paint my nails because I've got a bad habit of picking at the skin around my fingernails, and painting them stops me from doing so.

2. I am often in a dilemma over painting my nails vs cutting them short to facilitate in guitar/keyboard playing.
I do have the urge to make some music-sounding noise sometimes. I can't even play the guitar properly with my nails short, nevermind them being long. Long nails click horribly on the keys of the keyboard and when that happens I feel like cutting them off. But then I am faced with the possibility of the bad habit returning, so I usually just mope around until I lose the urge to make more music-sounding noise. ): But sometimes I choose to heed my musical calling and cut my nails till they are really short.

3. I sometimes talk to inanimate objects.
Like this blog. And my guitar which I had (impulsively) named Cherrystone. And the Spongebob stuffed toy. And Vanny the monkey. And my daily planner. And sometimes to the general crowd of inanimate objects in sight. And sometimes to air. Oh and I talk to some insects too. Only some though, those I am not afraid of, like flying ants and moths. Only. I occasionally talk to myself in the mirror too. And trust me, I am not loony.

4. My conversation skills (when I am with most real people) are almost nonexistent.
I perpetually lack appropriate topics to talk about, and sometimes appropriate responses to what people are saying. When people ask me to talk I clam up even more. Gah. I don't like it-- having nothing to say, and having people ask me to talk. ): But of course there are some who I am extremely comfortable with, and that's a different case altogether.

5. I didn't know how to spell acoustic until end of last year.
I don't seeing spelling mistakes on posters and signs, and when I was with Lim and George at DXO, there was this poster which said "Acoustic band" or something like that and I pointed at it and said "acoustic's spelt wrongly isn't it? It should be double c right?" And then Lim pointed out that I was wrong and that "acoustic" is spelt the way it is on the poster. Ah. What can I say, we're never too old to learn spelling.

Speaking of which I was watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee on ESPN the other day, and it was amazing the kind of words that actually exist in this world. I can't even remember what words the kids were asked to spell, and they were like, 12 to 14 year olds?
This twelve year old was asked to spell 'bulbul'. Yes I know it's a bird and you've heard of it before. That was not so bad. Another guy was asked to spell 'torii', which is Japanese. Why would they test them on Japanese?! Another was tested on the word 'trophallactic'. And this-- 'cryptococcosis'. Or how about 'sciuromorph'? (My jaw drops.) Whaaaaaaaaat...? And this was only round 7. They went all the way to round 16. Words like 'écrasé', 'aptyalism', 'esclandre' and 'hyphaeresis' don't even sound like English to me. Some of them probably aren't I wouldn't know.

Urgh. But those kids are terribly brilliant. Wow. I'd make my kid take part in a Spelling Bee in future like an evil parent. That is if I even have kids in the first place.

Abundant Growth of Lalang

There's nothing quite like watching aeroplanes take off on the runway about 500 metres away. It's an inexplicable rush of adrenaline that makes you want to whoop for joy, scream against the loud roar of the engines, and to become a pilot.

There's also nothing quite like watching aeroplanes drop really low, flying in for landing, especially when they fly over a body of water with the beam from their headlights reflecting off the surface. It's inexplicably overwhelming, and it makes you want to grin widely like a silly fool and throw your hands up in the air, scream against the loud roar of the engines, and to sit there forever, counting the planes that come in.

There's also nothing like the fleeting quality of the moment, like as if the beauty of plane watching lay in its repetitive transience.

We talked, we sang and we laughed on our tour de east.

When you were taken away from this world, how did it feel like for you?

For me it felt like the invisible ropes binding us together were cut, and all I have left to rely on are photographs we took together - your face and all of its expressions caught in my head - written excerpts in my diary of the things we did - letters you wrote to me - that particular scent you used to wear - your name off my lips -- all of which I would have to stow away in a safe place, a place where I can visit to relive our pristinely preserved memories over and over again, a place where Time is inconsequential, an impregnable fort which even Time's acidity cannot corrode.

I kept you in my wretched heart for a long while. With every turn of the head I caught your silhouette in my peripheral sight, but when I looked you had vanished. You only existed in another dimension--the psychological dimension of peripherals. With every waking morning my eyes could hardly open, dried and crusted by the tears they'd shed the night before. With every impulse to call you I get crushed by the vacuum on the other end of the line. With every nightfall the pain intensified.

The crippling loss left me struggling to keep afloat in the sea of people I'd immerse myself in to remind myself that I am still alive. I think when you died a part of me died too.

The day you went away the only place that Time couldn't reach, where the memory of you could have been kept pristine and undefiled, was destroyed. When you left the world you took a fragment of my heart with you into the unknown. Over the years I tried to replace that missing fragment with anything I could find-- happiness, excitement, new friends, peace, anger, a pet dog, delirium-- but nothing worked. You held the missing piece which could only be returned if you came back to life. But you didn't, and I gave up on the thought that you ever will.

Time attempted to fill up the gaping hole that you had left by slowly blurring and dissolving our shared memories. They couldn't remain pristine, and when the yellowed photographs faded, so did the pain I felt.

But you remain irreplaceable.

It was selfish of you to leave me alone here like that. I think I was angry at you for a while. I got angry when I thought about you leaving the pain you couldn't feel in death behind leeching onto the lives of those who were still around in the world. But of course I know you didn't mean to.

You didn't mean to.

This is when I am having difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality.

Certain scenarios I cannot remember if they belong in my dreams, or whether they had really happened.

So there's this deep, hollow feeling that has been plaguing me and I can't explain it.


I think we all occasionally feel hollow.