sue

Been up all night staring at you
wondering what's on your mind
i've been this way with so many before
but this feels like the first time..

you want the sunrise to go back to bed
i want to make you laugh
mess up my bed with me
kick off the covers, i'm waiting

every word you say, i think
i should write down
don't want to forget come daylight

happy to lay here
just happy to be here
i'm happy to know you
play me a song
your newest one
please leave your taste on my tongue

paperweight on my back
cover me like a blanket
mess up my bed with me
kick off the covers i'm waiting
every word you say i think
i should write down
don't want to forget come daylight

and no need to worry
that's wasting time
and no need to wonder
what's been on my mind
it's you
it's you
it's you

every word you say i think
i should write down
don't want to forget come daylight
i give up
i let you win
you win cause i'm not counting
you made it back
to sleep again

wonder what you're dreaming..

walking through chinatown yesterday, i was caught off guard by the way that places are toweled with memories, and by just how much.

the buddha tooth relic temple, the orange shawl, the desert stall at the five-foot ways, scarlet hotel, tea chapter, pgp...afternoons with golden-hour sunlight, evenings with the urgency of tomorrow's imminent dawn.

*********

gonggong is sick, and i'm so afraid it may be too late.

If you can't turn back the hands of time, Time, can you at least please stand still?

the sensitivity, the idealism, the naivety, the empathy, the mind constantly at work. to be srunched up and flung against the wall, repeatedly, and then so stupidly going back for more.

I would give up anything to be sensual, of this world. to derive pleassure from each and every one of my senses. to stop living theoretically, in abstraction, in absentia.

to sting and to hurt at all the world's injustices, to cry when confronted wtih the poor, to take every failed effort at progress as personal, to keep hoping only to be disappointed at this world, and the people who inhabit it. th disappointent is so much greater because of the foolish, stubborn hope that people are good, and that things can be better. the stupid stupid doggedness. why?

maybe my kind was just not meant to live on this earth.

take a deep breath. here we go again.

Candlewood

Oh little girl, why you cry
don't keep your head down, look high
though i know it hurts to go, your Father sees you.
don't give up just keep on going, though the winds may blow
and the boat that leads you on to shores that will keep going, keep going...

and oh Father don't you weep, no, the pain's too hard to keep, i know..
I know i know, is all i can say. cos when the trials do get tough
it's hard to sing, it's hard to love, the trials will keep coming, with no end

cos candlewood, you understood, the ways of life and how they could,
lead you on to shores of pain and glory
cos candlewood you know that suffering in pain and joy you're not alone and
you know, you know what it means to take and give away..

she was walking in the fields, with her white clothes, made of steel
chained to the ground but she kept walking.
she lifted her head up high and let out a crying song and dance, and she sings a song for us
sweet..sweet song

candlewood you understood ways of life and how they keep going,
how you keep on going though they push you away
candlewood you understood what meant to shine in the night hight with the light and
you undestand what it means to give and take away.

you shine through the night...
your song keeps on going the flow of the morning light...flows through you and you will stay true, not gorgotten by me, no,
keep on singing a song of sorry and glory
of sorry and joy...and glory

cos you built up the land you opened up your heart and sang for me
and i'll hold up your hand and sing a song for you.
oh candlewood, you understood, the ways of life and how they could
lead you to shores above and in your love you gave a story,
and i will sing and i will dance..
i'll lift my hands and take a stance
for your cause

cos you showed me what it means to give and take away...

--Aeden Keffelew

I need to walk away.

Cambodia was magical.

riding on motorbikes on rugged terrian, wind in hair, passing rice padi fields, floating villages. pencils, books jelly and candy for children, sunrises and sunsets, glorious glorious sunsets on the Mekong

massages, cigars, $1 cocktails..

conversations on patriotism, money, sex, family, love, death, travel. life.
strumming, singing, swinging (hands and feet in water)

smiles--broad, heartwarming, spontaneous.

5 short, endless days. unreality. all but precious memories coming home.

i was having dinner with S last night, at Senso, a beautiful Italian restaurant on Club street.

I was telling him that I really didn't ask for very much in a man.
I did not care for wealth, intelligence, or looks.
All i wanted was for someone to treat me well, to treat me good.
cos I wouldn't be able to stand up for myself otherwise.

And then I said that that was actually a lot to ask for.
S agreed. He said that these days, no one really treats others well enough.


..........................

I watched Away From Her today, it was incredibly sad. Love is always assymetrical at any one point, and more often than not, love is illusory.

I just want to be left alone. isolated and thus insulated.
Please just leave me alone untouched and whole, instead of entering into my zone, and leaving it punctured when you exit.


it's difficult to hold yourself together with a perforated edge.

I would rather be alone than to feel lonely next to my lover.

with him sometimes I felt more lonely than anything else, when I was right next to him.

breaking up with him was the right, and only, thing to do. It was a relieve for him as well I think, and if I didn't do it he wouldn't have known how to do himself and the two of us would just have continued being swept along by time and circumstance.

i wasn't even asking for reciprocation--i just wanted some appreciation. He was a good guy, i liked him a lot, but he wasn't good for me--he never really supported me through anything, and made me feel bad about myself much of the time. If my sense of self was not so secure, i would really have felt i was worthless. but thanks to the people i really love in my life, i knew that i was not.

I just got back from Bath. I went there alone today. Excluding the 3-hour delay back because of a fatal accident, the day was quite perfect.

Slowly through the course of the day, i started caring again. Bath had a lot to do with it. The train ride there itself was discomforting--discomforting in that it first brought me out of my habituated nonchalance, the indifference, the carelessness that have come to be by de facto personality these days. The English countryside is beautiful. perhaps it is because it sees so little sun that the English countryside is shielded when the sun finally does come out--afraid that the harshness of brilliant sunshine might prove too overwhelming, the sun shines tentatively--so that the scene is tender, precarious, precious. Bath itself is very pretty too, more european in some parts than english.

i walked into the Victoria Museum of Art, where they were having an exhibition of the Society of Bath Artists, and the familiar but long-missed tingles up the spine, hair standing on ends, heart in throat sensations returned. returned with a jolt. how art can pique such raw and subtle sensibilities i do not know. for the first time in a long while, i was feeling. i was fully engaging this material world. tears threatened to fall. all these colours, all these strokes, all this texture. i wanted to weep there and there in the middle of the art gallery. how i've forgotten how art touches me so. i love art. and i missed it so much. if i can afford to one day, i want to a little art gallery of my own, or at least a little room, where i can keep and display the art my heart desires, or lend them to a museum. one of my biggest regrets to this day is passing up the Dali lithograph in vienna those years ago. in retrospect 900 euros is a bargain for pricelessness. if i can afford to one day, i want to paint. i want to sit at my easel and paint. I'm not sure watercolours will suit me. maybe. but most probably oils. thick, layered oils.

It wasn't just Bath per se however. I realised that i liked being by myself. I thinks i;m crazy, thinks I'm deviant, thinks I'm weird to go to london on my own to watch 2 musicals, to go to bath on my own, to go to africa on my own. i don't care what I thinks. I hate using these terms--deviant, abnormal, normal--thanks to foucault, but i think it's perfectly sane to want to be alone. london was a bit lonely at first, just because i haven't been left by myself in a while, but i need to get away from everything and from people. and then after London's initiation yesterday, Bath was the start of my enjoying adventuring alone. and i love it. I'm not the kind who needs someone there with me all the time. how claustrophobic. By myself, i am myself. my thoughts are clarified, i am thinking, i am connecting with and communicating with this earth. i can hear myself speak, i can hear myself think. i am away from having to justify myself, or my actions to anyone.

and what about loneliness?As Celine from Before Sunset says, "i'd rather be alone than feel lonely next to my lover." i don't feel lonely. i think. and even if i do, i think i relish it. i think i actually enjoy the solitude, i actually love the solitary life.

maybe it's because i've started to read again. i've read a book a day for the past three days. marvelous. i've forgotten as well how i enjoyed reading.

As i rode back on the train at sunset ( at about 9.30!), the English pastoral landscape was swathed in the softest of pinks and purples and blues, colours that served as foils to the reflection of the bright orange setting sun on the window through which i stared out. i turn my head across the isle and see the deep, bright orange orb of the setting sun itself and am so startled by the beauty of everything i am taking in. The countryside really resembles the watercolours i have seen in museums, or even the strokes and dots and dabs of the impressionists and post-impressionists. monet? matisse? manet? strange how surprised i am at how intimately life imitates the art that imitates in the first place.

this world is so beautiful it hurts. i love it. i love it. i love it.

but that doesn't make me like people any better.

i need to stop hurting people. it's like i have this perverse subconscious compulsion to hurt even the people i really care about. it's like i have an amorphous body of morals that i don't even live by.
and these are real people and real feelings and real pain involved.

i want to float around in a bubble that never bursts so i can keep everyone away from me...

'But I want neither world nor dream, divine voice,
I want my liberty, my human love
in the darkest corner of the breeze no one wants.
Because I am not a man, not a poet, not a leaf,
only a wounded pulse that circles the things the other side.'

Federico Garcia Lorca

"Dear Gen,

i'm lookin at your blog and my heart bleeds. it really does. seeing "unrecoverable past" is so incredibly painful. i used to burst into tears by how hppay i was to see you SO, VERY happy in those very pics, and when i came to duke, seeing it in real life was better than i could ever imagine. 'it' being the extraordinary love between you and mikey...

now i burst into tears cos i know It no longer exists. the deepest, most natural, safest, most excitting, most care-free, most uplifing, fiercest love i have ever seen to exist between two ppl is gone..

and gen, it makes it so much more painful because i like to think i KNOW mikey, i met him, and i think he is the most precious person in the world. and i know you. and he was the best person for you. beyond my wildest dreams..

please tell me all about things when i'm there gen, and i hope i'm satisfied with the story...i'll try to udnerstand but i'll also try to set you straight..

i remember mikey, gen, i LOVED him. loving someone never came more easily and more naturally for me. i daresay loving him was way easier than loving you at duke. he HE was always ALWAYSthere for mewhen i was tehre gen, while you frittered away with your buds. he was there for me while i was crying my heart out away to myself because you abandoned me. i won't have mikey at oxford gen, so please take care of gerrie! i'll have no one but
you--don't leave me aside!!=((

i love you gen, and i do love mikey. you can strangle me, but i still dream being auntie to the most fabulous kids in the world--yours and mikey's.

heartbroken...

and lotsa love, gerrie.."

why is it that the ONLY person i develop a crush on is the ONLY person who is completely disinterested, which is the ONLY reason i dveloped a crush on him (yes it's a guy this time) in the first place.

how annoying. bahhh!!!!

so i handed in a shitty draft of my thesis on Thursday, after maybe a week of barely any sleep.

I was so happy it's over and done with for now, i went to celebrate!!! went for two dinners and 4 bars. I was so looking forward to sleeping in the next day!

Alas! whenever i drink substantially, i wake up really early--and can't go back to bed!! so i went to bed at 4.30am after the whole week of sleep deprivation, and woke up at 8.30!! and then i had a yummy dinner last night with A and his ex-roomates from west point ( who got back from iraq) and had quite a bit again to drink. didn't go out with them after dinner cos i really wanted to sleep. got to bed at 3 am anyway. and this morning, i wake up at 6.30 am!!!! and can't go back to bed!!

i am exhausted..=( leaving for london tonight, croatia tomorrow, and then back to the US! yay!!!!!

ok, so my weight had at one point dropped to 45kg, or 99 pounds. and my BMI to 16.5.

but i looked and look fine. and have been eating as much as i can cos yes, 99 pounds is scary. and i really really want my boobs back. so i am ok and healthier now. just got back from belgium where i ate tons. chocolate, waffles, fries ( they invented fries) and seafood. non-stop! and my thai neighbour just cooked me a yummy 3-dish meal, and then ice-cream. and am meeting people everyday this week for meals. i've put on a couple of kilos i think. yipeeee! i still have quite a tummy! so please don't worry!!!

i just posted on virgi's blog:

"we need to speak about bosnian visas..and other things. i'm feeling a little bit like i'm being pulled back into my semi-depression last term by my very own akrasia. why is that..why is it that happy hearts are so hard to find. elusive and transient. why is it that we can't give to others what we want ourselves. why is it when you feel you're ok and the world is great you are reminded that it's not quite.."

I'm trying to avoid my work again. the first time this year i have to work and i run away. spent 8 hours in the library today staring off into space, checking out bloody f b ( i have decided to ask a friend to change my password so i am forced out of repeatedly pressing the same buttons waiting for something to change), listening to podcasts, reorganizing my photos, compulsively deleting emails..to while time until lunch with B ( he says when he's doing derivations and plugs in the classical music, he is gone, lost...how different can we be) and then the whole process repeats itself till it's time for the library to close and i can go to the gym (the gym that hurts my knees.)

Methinks the bane of my existence is work. it just makes me so unhappy. for the first time in my life i think i want to be a socialite. a socialite that does lots and lots of good for charity. i think I'll be good at raising money. i mean i've helped raise more than US$60,000 in my short life. except that i'm so bad at networking because i'm so shy. but then no one thinks i am. why am i ranting.

i think it's because i was listening to this song-"this woman's work" and i was actually quite profoundly affected. affected where i feel and hurt. ( oh no does this mean that i am becoming of this material world, if i'm actually affected by music?) why am i writing with so many brackets (or parentheses for the americans out there) (oh no i just did it again)--am i trying to bracket some of the things in my life, hoping if i bracket them long enough they disappear?
And i was thinking, i have less than 3 months left here. even less to get to know people I am just starting to know. is there a point? a point in my being proactive for once, instead of just turning away the people who come? i instinctively protest that there is. but this is not practically possible. i am being practical again. how is it that i've never followed my gut or my heart? that the first thing i tell guys when i meet them is how much better the world would be without their sex, that we should all produce through binary fission (or mitosis take your pick), that guys think with their dicks, that physicality means nothing to me, that a world of asexual amoebas would be heaven on earth..

(I think it's because i'm trying to bracket my heart, so that my i can will it to irrelevance)

How We are Spared

At midsummer before dawn an orange light returns to the mountains
Like a great weight and the small birds cry out
And bear it up

The Shield of Achilles 
W. H. Auden
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

I really could not be happier...

"and the songbirds keep singing like this...and i love you...like never before."

I love life so much it hurts

Tracy Chapman is playing....

Sunlight bursts into my room...

The birds are are in song...

My yellow tuplips on the window sill are in full bloom, singing to the sun...


It is a beautiful saturday.

It is a glorious world.

~~~~

Been living a mostly balanced lifestyle, and i've felt better than i have in ages.