Almost

It was a near miss - I spent many days thinking about how close I was. But the opportunity was snatched away from my grasp - and it saved me.

The night will soon be illuminated by fireworks, releasing acrid smoke into the atmosphere. We revel in the sentimentality of new years and make resolutions which are never meant to be met. But it is an almost-possibility which we continue to make.

I still remember last year's resolution. It was meant to be an almost-resolution - an almost-promise to myself that I would learn to live again. And here I am, one year later, making more almost-promises. It is a deadly circle of unfulfilled promises, dreams and aspirations that we get ourselves stuck in year in and year out. But it is the hope we harbour in our hearts which make each unfulfilled year bearable and each almost-promise worth making.

I had no hope but everyone else had hope for me. So they took the dark away and thrust me into the light.

Fireworks explode into the night and I promise myself, once more, that I will learn to live again.

Lives Overlooked

The night bears down heavy blows on her friends. I wasn't her friend but I could feel the atmosphere thickening with suspense and ominousness.
 
She was one year my junior and I remembered watching her eat her lunch in the dining hall with her other Year Eleven friends. She had an elegance which only she seemed to possess - it made her stand out amongst the gaggle of makeup-heavy girls. She never really spoke to me with the exception of the occasional "hi" as we passed each other in the boarding house. Nothing more than that. It wasn't enough for me to think much about her as I graduated and left for university.

Three years later, I received word that she was in a coma. Lying in a hospital bed somewhere in the states, it was almost surreal to think that she would cross my mind again while I was sat in a small room in the English countryside. It reawoke images of a young girl in boarding school - a girl who I never really knew but wish I did now.





Letters praying for a speedy recovery would soon flood her family home - and mine would be one of them.












Hearts pulse wanting you back
Lights shine giving you strength
Lightning whips scaring away death
Please come home and give us faith


Get well soon.

Never did I think...

[silence]

Dispersed

Sink into similarity.
You do not see me;
You see us
and them
never me
he
she
or it.
Disappear into crowds;
Identity spreads thinly;
The many feet of too many
The many eyes of a united crowd.
All the same;
All a group
where no
one
exists.

Change

It was always the boys and I who were sat on the swings, trying to go as high as we could go. I was five and they were eight and ten - young cousins trying to outdo each other on the playground. Every now and then, someone would go running home in a flood of tears with an injury of some form. But despite each fall, each scrape, each bruise we still went back to the park to play competition again. Ten, eight and five, we were. Ten. Eight. And five.

The humid days in the park soon became a past we no longer talked about. We were now twenty, twenty-three and twenty-five. Days spent in office erased all recollection of the events of our childhood. Only on the rainy weekends spent indoors would I remember the days when the cousins and I played on the swings. I wondered if they remembered it as fondly as I and wondered if they thought about the past on gloomy days in the Australian outback just as I did on wintry days in the English countryside.

There was never much communication between us since we parted ways. They left for university long before I did and never really came back. I caught them during the small slivers of time we spent together, but the stories we could share soon dwindled and we were left with nothing much to say. Gone were the days in the park when we laughed, screamed, cried - perhaps, they were never meant to be relived over the Christmas dinner chat. Now dressed smartly in our work clothes (or at least I would like to think I dressed smartly), we left it all behind and all that's left is the acknowledgement that much has changed and that we could never revert back to the childhood we once had  fifteen years before.

August 23, 2010

Coming home was a bittersweet moment. Returning to see the familiar faces was meant to be a point of excitement but I knew the familiar faces also brought back a familiar pain. Is that what families are supposed to do. I don't see joy in my return and neither do they. The next time I return no one will turn a blind eye at me. Sometimes I wonder whether I should even come back but at the same time..can I stand being away for that long?

Sometimes I wish I never existed. Non-existence seems so much easier.

Lessons to be Learnt

"At some point she has to try"

"People are starting to notice...eventually, they're going to think: why bother?"

"I think she's very insecure about herself..."

"She is very vulnerable"

"..and so I think she is afraid to talk to people because she thinks they do not want to talk to her"

"but you see: people don't see that...people will not perceive that...they just see her the way her actions portray her..perception is a horrible thing"

"Yeah I know...because our perception of her is based on her actions..and they aren't reflecting her in the most positive light"

"Her actions and her inactions..."

"Umm..yes inactions...definitely"







Actions speak louder than words. Inaction speaks louder than actions.

And I curl up under the covers

while the night is ignited by fireworks

to prove 

that the unresponsive

can only ever lie alone

Stereo Beats

Songs are thumping out of the room above me and I'm not annoyed.

It is loud enough for me to pick out the words of the song and feel each beat reverberating throughout the building. The song evokes the images of dim rooms in an underground pub, brick walls and all. It never seemed more real than now. Remembering the days which no longer exist was more painful than having to talk about it and so I pen it down on a scruffy piece of paper ...only to lose it when morning comes.

There are no surprises in the fallen words which travelled only so far into space and time. They drop like birds shot out of the sky and I could only watch and set the hunting dogs upon their bodies. And when walking by the ford, I would dip my hand into the cold water and wish it would wash away the memories.

But of course the music stops and the images float away into the night as if to tease me by eluding me. The view of the ceiling now sets upon me and I realise that there is no stream to walk by or sky for which the birds (or the words) to fall from. I am left in a space and void which holds no meaning or emotions. It was all an imagination - a fiction of the mind.

December 15, 2010

The silence speaks,
we hide in the haze
and there's a sweet melody of birds
chirping in the night sky
never to be seen
not truly
not really
but we hear them still
fluttering in the cold air.

There's a ruin in the park.
It stands stone cold by the swings
waiting to be touched by
a child
waiting for the sun to reappear
and shine light on its decrepit state.
It's waiting for love
and affection
and possibly
nurturance.

I hold the idea, tight in my hands
that footsteps will soon be heard
in a distance
slowly getting louder
before disappearing again.
We love the light it brings
and dread the loneliness it leaves
But we want to be the ruin in the park
and wait for eternal light to shine someday.

And in silence it leaves

 graves lying idle in the dark

Reason

Why do any more?



Because we talk in our sleep.

11 December, 2010

Never a day spent not thinking,
not remembering,
not regretting.
Never a day thinking:
"I love life".

The tombstones of memory
moss-eaten, green,
and vile.
Never a day not mourning
Never a day wishing
for a quiet ending

Path through the woods
where mother nature litters leaves.
Trees dying on Christmas Eve.
Never a day not wanting love.
Never a day with blessings from above.

The light burns on a winter's morn
when the little one was born.
Mother of birth, hands of death.
Never a day wishing for change.
Never a day, ever again.

To those who didn't see it when I did.

Your Daughter

Victims at sixteen - it just didn't seem fair. Why did they have to lose their lives in that manner? Why did their parent have to weep over their emaciated bodies? It isn't fair, is it?

Remember your beautiful daughter running down the stairs on a sunny morning. Her sillohuette danced against the glare of the mid-summer's sun as you watched from the breakfast table. You sipped your coffee and pushed up your glasses to admire the child you brought up with love to love her family and herself.

Now look at her as she lies in her coffin - her face pale with malnourishment and death. You will never get to see her graduate; you will never get to see her get married; you will never get to see her be happy ever again. Where did the girl you saw dancing in the sunlight go? No longer in your arms, she now will rest in the ground and buried together with her is the sadness she never got to tell you about.

You swear to leave her bedroom untouched.

March 2, 2009

Sigh....another weekend gone and now I'm neck-deep in History notes and essays. It's been United Nations galore since early this morning and I'm brain-drained from all the shit we have to stuff ourselves with for tomorrow's test. I swear, I'd rather be in class.

I was talking to Anisa in the library this afternoon and it made me realise how much I miss 2008. It wasn't a wholly good year but at least there were the great times to look back on. Then again, 2009 has only started. Now that we're into March, it's a small chunk of 2009 gone but there's still another 10 months left to go through. A lot's gonna change in that time frame.

I have a much more optimistic roommate now as compared to before I left for exeat and that's a good thing. I guess the "many fishes in the sea" theory is starting to have a positive effect ...optimism is always welcomed. It's all (or at least, mostly) grins for room 404 now.

March 15, 2009

Doing C3 is like jumping off a cliff repeatedly hoping to fly. I'm sorry but I think you need to be a bird to do that....or an insect for that matter.

I'm done with Frankenstein btw. I'm sick of reading the damn book, sick of doing the damn exam paper, sick of having to see that black speck that lives two floors below me. So what the hell...screw Frankie and his inability to fit in.

A lot of things have happened over exeat and obviously I'm not the one to really say as I wasn't around. I mean, I can see the after effects of whatever has happened but that's only at a surface level. I've had my fair share of confusion before I left and I can't say it's sorted itself out yet - where the hell did I put my calculator? -_-"





I've got a message for a whiny little git who stayed back for exeat and who held up class the other day to make way for some drama:

I didn't think you were going to commit suicide and even if you had the guts to, I don't give a damn.





I've got a much nicer message for a really nice person:

Thank you for the acknowledgement. Want cake? =)

March 16, 2009

Somehow I feel as though the cockroach population in Room 404 is going to increase over the next few weeks. I just killed a tiny one which was making its way across Daphnie's pillow. And last week, I smacked a flying cockroach down with my Dr. Faustus book. Not a great way to get started on Literature, I can assure you.

Moving on from unwanted creepy crawlies, I had a pretty dead day today. Not because it was boring but because I spent 75% of my time walking around half asleep. Maybe I should have slept earlier last night but I had to read my cockroach guts-covered Dr. Faustus book for an essay I got for prep. Latin definitely doesn't agree with me. So at 1am I was still flipping aimlessly through Faustus. Quite a sad first-night back really. Had first two off before dashing of to Math this morning. Lunch also came slightly later than normal because Tiow didn't let us go 5 mins before the bell (like she usually does) so I was stuck lining up outside the dining hall together with the other unfortunate souls there.

There was supposed to be athletics today but due to a bout of rainfall it's been postponed to Monday next week. I can already imagine the whining and complaining going on in Jawahir. I don't blame them really.

Shit...History essay 

June 3, 2009

Yesterday's History paper really went down the drain. Really felt as though God was trying to take a nip at me for being the lazy ass I've been this entire year and a half in KTJ. Oh well, it's over and done with I suppose and any remorse will only come when the results come out in August.

Oh god, the thought of results day...

For now anyways, it's just literature and Maths so it should be pretty okay from now on. Corelli and Faustus are really getting to me though. The Italian soldier and the deranged German scholar really are a handful especially at times like this. Stresss

I really feel like blowing up the brains of some of the people who live here. It's a real pain in the ass to see their faces during exam time. The feeling of seeing their faces is equivalent of that of a gay bio teacher trying to instigate a fight by tossing your homework out in the corridors. Fuck you, you bloody gay shit.

The only way to survive Art Centre, I've realised, is not to care. Not to care about the bloody gits who get in your face, not to care about any crude remarks, not to care about the gossiping and the bitching, not to care about the eavesdropping(thus, say whatever the hell you want regardless of who is standing next to you), not to care about the assumptions made, not to care about the "friends" which you thought you had, not to care about the "friends" who get on your nerves....

I can go around rolling my eyes at anyone now and not worry about being threatened about them being gouged out of my skull(mainly because I'll be the one gouging eyeballs out instead).

That lousy little fake bugger better watch it....she'll be the next one to go flying over the corridor railings in this school.

January 9, 2009

I'm finally about to have my first real weekend Saturday in Mantin. Tiow is taking the day off because of a bit of food poisoning...but then again, there's no such thing as mild food poisoning in KTJ.

C2 has really drained me today. I was hoping to get some work done after the C2 paper but just before I could get myself to bogged down with work I got distracted by a bit of laundry. Everyone said that C1 was a bitch. Of course, by the screwed up looks on everyone's faces was enough to send the rest of us into cardiac arrest. Ah yes...the bitterness of life with the presence of redundant Maths papers. C2 was bearable...not impossible by any means but definitely redundant. My concern and interest in the area of a cylinder doesn't stretch that far and I can say the same thing for everyone else.

I rushed to what remained of my extra literature class after maths and stoned quite a fair bit admist the talk of Yeats' "Second Coming" before walking out just as knowledgable I was when I first walked in. Then, I dashed of for a bit of cross-country practice before dinner.

I should stop mucking about. I still have 5 papers to go and it's been a fucking bitch so far. Oh god...I can hear Hughes pulling up in front of Naquiyuddin now. God his car sounds like it needs a good bit of oiling.

Ah fuck...lights out.

Sleep-Talking

Slip into unconsciousness
on the bed
head resting on pillows.
You never thought you would go so suddenly
but neither did I.

A muffled voice in the night time
the silence emphasised.
so timid and unexpected, the words:
I'll get you
and you sink back into a drowsy, silent stupor.

Never did I think
or expect
or anticipate
the growing of the voice
finding it's way out of sleep
into your being.
Why did it come and take you
and claim you? Your youthful face
sinking into gauntness.
Your eyes infiltrated
by the vice
this voice set upon you.
Why did you have to die
before my eyes?

But you breathe again
one stormy night
The voice dies away in the distance
and I hold your hand
knowing it will soon be okay.
I listen in fear
for the voice returning in avengence,
but all I can hear
and possibly all that is left
is nothing
but the rustling of the trees
in the cold September winds.

Deception

Don't let the lazy think they are hardworkers.
Don't let the weak think they are strong.
Don't let the ill think they are recovered.

because doing so

doesn't make you their  friend;

it makes you a liar.

Nights Alight

Stab

You can only hate yourself so much

Sleep Rants

Tonight is much colder than the last.

I want to curl up next to a hot water bottle and slip away into sleep. But I know I can't. I will be spending the night tossing and turning, feeling the sharp bite of the cold in my toes. The portable radiator is on the max and I am bundled up in thermals, flannel pyjamas, hoodie and socks. Tonight isn't going to be easy...I can feel it in my numb fingers.

Pass the time with some music:

"I turn the music up
I've got my records on"

Fancy listening to Coldplay on a chilly night in Surrey. If only the night would pass over sooner - five more hours before the alarm rings. I tuck my fingers under the pillow. Just another pathetic attempt at keeping warm. I can feel the sleep bearing down on me but the cold keeps me clinging to consciousness. I guess this is limbo.

"Once upon a time, somebody ran
somebody ran away..."

I can't think. I am too tired. But yet I am awake. I want the darkness to drop on me and smother me and take me away. I want to float off to another sense of non-awakening and sink into it so that it would become my world.

"You really hurt me..."

My hands are water and yet I can't feel them because of the cold. I turn over onto my side. The wall never seemed so colourless, so patternless, so non-existent. In fact the world no longer exists. It's all an abstract concept within the mind. Memories and experiences seem to bob in and out of the sub-conscious with images of child-me running around in the park emerging on a non-chronological time frame. I can see the sun on a humid morning and suddenly the thunder on a stormy tropical afternoon.

Shrill ringing

I can see the old car my father once owned and suddenly the bicycle I used to ride in my grandmother's porch.

"In the night the stormy night
she closed her eyes"

Shrill ringing

I can hear the voice of my grandfather and suddenly the chants of the nuns at his funeral.


Shrill ringing. Shrill ringing. Shrill ringing.


Yes..yes...I'm up for god's sake. Time for work...
...fuck, I've overslept again.

July 4, 2009

the door is creaking
I can hear it slam shut as shuffles of those slippers
travel up and down the cement corridor
but I lie awake in my...
..pains?
...regrets?
...loss?

It's one thing to lie on the cold hard bed and
another to be with a presence on that
same, cold, hard bed. The matress
would seem...
...more inviting?
...more warm?
...more loving?

How do I equate a loss of the world
when all I can do
is lie on that damned
cold, hard bed?
I hear the door open.
Creak
And then shut again.
The echo of a closing
renounces throughout the room
and I lie there
only to believe that the world is cold and hard
just like that damned bed.

I've got my believes
and I suppose I should stick by it
no matter how much I'm being
tempted into destroying it
along with my morals
but everytime that damned door creaks
or I lie on that damned bed, I'm
always reminded:

There is a life out there, and
only I can retrieve it for myself
and so I stay on that bed
alone
cold
aching
just to be able to achieve that life
in hope that maybe
some day
I'll be able to let it all go....

A&E

There were no sirens, no screams, no horror.

There was regret, disappointment,and hurt.

The A&E waiting room had never been so empty. Well, it only seemed empty in my head. I realised it was an illusion that my deprived state had left me with. All I could see was what I was focused on - my hands. Everything around it blurred, the sounds muffled.

My hands were light and strangely angular. It looked almost distorted with its anatomy so prominent - I could see the blue veins which ran down my arm and the tendons which joined the bones to muscle (or what's left of it really)

I felt the weight of someone's hand on my shoulder. It was then I looked up to see a young woman looking at me with tearful eyes. She was my friend but at the time, she seemed just like any other person who didn't matter to me. I could feel all emotions, but dread, ebb away from inside me. Suddenly the world seemed so insignificant - nothing in the whole world could be bigger than the emptiness inside my mind. It was so overwhelmingly...non-existent.

My friend placed her hand on mine and said: "You're doing the right thing." I sighed and dropped my head - and dozed off as the world walked silently over me.

Let's

Let's write about the lies we told each other
the ones we coughed up
not to deceive
but to progress.

Let's share our stories with each other
the ones we buried
not to hide
but to protect.

Let's forget the past together
the ones we survived
and lived to tell
and hope to conquer.

Let's not think of existence...

...and float away into the empty sea.

Chronology of Friendship

Here we are at five.

We were playing at the swings after a thunderstorm. Below our swinging feet were puddles of water where little tadpoles swam. We held hands and smiled knowing that tomorrow was going to be just as fun. The sun will always shine after a storm



Here we are at ten.

It was your birthday and I had my arm over your shoulder in a friendly embrace. You threw bits of cake at me that year. It was a friendly gesture - it was your way of letting me know that you were thinking of me. I don't think our mothers were impressed to find their daughters covered in cake.



Here we are at fifteen.

I stood behind the group of girls we went out with. I didn't think what we were doing was right. Weed and alcohol on a humid night. There were dark-clothed men walking the alleys looking out for promiscuous, naive girls. I didn't want to be one of them. I slinked away from the group before midnight and left you to form new, dangerous relationships.



Here we are at twenty.

I stood over you. With flowers in my hand. I had never see you so calm before and I smiled weakly as I placed the flowers in your hands. The bruise you obtained from the asault was barely visible under your make-up - you looked perfect, just as you did in life. The lid closed and you resigned into the darkness.






And now, here I am.







.

.

Sanity left me stranded.

Unclear

Complacency

I'm complacent.

I woke up one day, quite suddenly, after two years. It was reality and it was harsh: no matter how nice a person one is, there's no such thing a karma. It's bullshit.

But forget karma for now. Think about reality for awhile. What is it? - It's a perception and understanding of life concepts and it's different for everyone.

However, if it's just perception, isn't it just an illusion - an illusion which is morphed by life experiences and individual differences? For example, the aphasic patient who can only perceive things in his left peripheral view. Or the depressed victim who can only perceive the sad and the negative.

Emotional perception is the individual's own inner illusion and can only be viewed by the one it belongs to. But the individual still chooses how he wants to see it.

When I woke up, I decided I was going to perceive complacency. Fuck perfection; fuck happy endings; fuck all the unnatural expectations of modern society. They are all the illusions created by a mass of unthinking schmucks and adopted by an even bigger mass of unthinking feeble-minded individuals.

And so with that, I followed a more obscure path - and stayed quite complacent and pretty damn happy ever since.

..Perfect Symmetry..

"I shake through the wreckage for signs of life
scrolling through the paragraphs
clicking through the photographs"

Dear Liv

Dear Liv,

I haven't spoken to you in awhile and I was wondering how you are. So, how are you?

I've spent days in solitude reading books about how you would swoop down and pick up the feeble-minded and give them hope that there is something beyond 'now'. I am usually sat in the cemetery reading these books. On John Marble's headstone to be exact. He was a sailor who died in the 1850s. I suppose you left him back then too.

I just wanted to let you know that I am still waiting. I know you'll probably never come back again but I can always wish you will. It's the best that I can do.

Well, it's been a joy knowing you, Liv. Thank you for reading my letter. I didn't think you would. But if you never do, I hope these words end up in the hands of someone who can relate to them.

x

Dispersion

The second the light touches the ground

it disperses
and reflects off in tiny invisible rays
never to be seen as a whole again.

Realisation

It makes you realise what you've lost

It makes you realise who you're not

It makes you realise what you can't do

but then again

It makes you realise what you have

It makes you realise who you are

It makes you realise what you can do






I want to know what else it can make me realise.

Sometimes.

Mind-reading.

I study Psychology.
I can't read minds
as much as I wish I could

There isn't much sense in worrying about what the old man in the park thinks about me considering I don't actually know him. But it feels like he has a critical eye on me and I'm scared.

I join the crowd of grocery shoppers in Tesco and it doesn't feel like I am as submerged as the others. I walk quietly through the aisles, not saying  word. I am listening to Keane's 'Bedshaped' on my iPod and hoping the people around me aren't paying any attention to the girl in a checkered shirt and shorts. I am too self-conscious. What are they thinking of me? Why is she looking at the tin of beans I am holding? Why is he looking at my legs?

I walk off to pay for my items and a small child runs into me. There is a look of shock in his eyes and suddenly he cries. I feel guilty for being the one he ran into and I feel terrified his mother might think I've done something to him.

I drop my basket of items and leave the store empty-handed.

I am in the park. It's dark and everything seems to be going to sleep. Still listening to 'Bedshaped', I thought about the old man in the park, the random shoppers in Tesco and the small boy I inevitably scarred with my presence. I rip out some grass and examine it with what little light I have and notice how not one blade looked different from the other - I want to be like grass - to fit in and not stand out. I want to be deindividuated and be engulfed by the crowd so that my being is the crowd.

I hear someone clearing his throat behind me. It's the old man. I get up and walk off as quickly as I can.

I lose sight of the old man behind the trees and I feel safe.

Paradise

"When she was just a girl
she expected the world
but it flew away from her reach
so she ran away in her sleep"

"Life goes on and it gets so heavy..."

"In the night
the stormy night
she closed her eyes"

Time Games

There wasn't much to look forward to at some point. Frail, weak and dying, the self was focused on inner destruction and outer torture.

The sandwich packet sits unopened in the fridge and days later ends up in the bin with patches of mould already on the bread. I frown at the thought of food wastage but I knew that that's what I had to do to get things my way. I put my hand to my face and felt the dry skin and the wrinkles which should not be there in youth.

There's a clutter of plates behind me.

It's my flatmate, preparing a plate of toast and baked beans (Heinz brand). I briskly walk out of the kitchen without a word to her and sigh at the thought of a conversation lost to my irrational fear of her toast and baked beans.

Time passes.






There isn't much time left. A friend calls me into a coffee shop. It is urgent. She tells me what she has to say. I break down.

Time stands still.

IVs and ECGs and "Ill...need help...ward in Farnham". This whole time, my friend holds my hand and tells me it will be alright. I don't believe her and I say "I hate you for doing this to me".

Time becomes irrelevant.

As I look out through the barred windows onto the hospital grounds, I think about how I never thought I'd be in this position - tagged and observed for 6 hours a day. I can smell roast potatos coming from the room next door. I want to cry. "They're undoing everything..." I look at the ward staff and see them gesturing me to come into the dining room. I sigh. "Their job is to undo everything."

Time is in sync with reality.

My coursework is beginning to pile up and it all feels too much. After weighing out my lunch of hummus and cucumber sticks (in grams) and counting the cherry tomatoes, I sit down in front of my laptop and begin to type away at my assignment:

The motivation of eating and hunger is supported by studies based on the set-point theory and settling-point theory. However, sufferers of certain disorders such as...

Time rewinds itself suddenly.

I slam the laptop shut and abandon my hummus, cucumber sticks and cherry tomatoes and punch the wall. I pick up my bag and decide I am going for a walk. As I leave the room, I feel my fist throbbing and my eyes tearing up.


Fuck memories.

Can you Hear It?

They whisper...

...whisper....

...whisper...

I can't talk back to them.

They want me to die.

You don't deserve existence

Carry away the voices.  

They scare me so much.

It's almost like 

it is me.

I am you.

Dark Scenes

The day fades into night quite unnoticably.

You forgot they turned the clocks back an hour didn't you?

I looked up into the night and realised how much the darkness had changed the scene. I could no longer see the clouds; darkness and all had enveloped the sky.

I heard a plane fly above me but I could not see it. But the ethereal sounds of its colossal engines echoed across the sky, leaving me somewhat in awe at the fact that something so hidden could produce such a thunderous roar.

It was only six o'clock but it felt like the world was already sleeping. It's the illusion the early-setting sun created - it shut the busy society indoors and lulled them to sleep but I stayed outside to look at the changing skies.

It was beautiful - but oh, so lonely.

Legacy

Arnie drew his last breath. And of course, he died.

I kind of expected it. Fifty years of smoking clearly would do him in at some point. Unfortunately, it had to happen after I got to know him - after he became my friend. Had I not known him, it would have saved me a trip to the cemetery.

They buried Arnie on a Saturday morning and engraved on the headstone was:

Arnold Joseph Miller

25th June 1930- 3rd August 1995

May he rest in peace

Jesus, Arnie. No wonder you're dead. Smoking since you were fifteen!

The crowd of mourners soon left, gliding silently between the headstones of the long dead. They left their last words and took their tears with them. Soon, they would change out of their black attire and change into their summer dresses (it is August after all) and sit in their gardens sipping wine.

"To Arnie," they would say as the scorching sun beats down on their pale skin. When the sun set and the people intoxicated, they would retreat to their homes and shut the door on another day without Arnie.

And so summers and autumns and winters and springs pass and good old Arnie lies a good few feet under the cemetery grounds, silent. No one visits him, no one speaks of him and (unsurprisingly), no one remembers him. It is another life wasted - his stories, his experiences, his values gone. But what can we do? Poor Arnie's dead and gone. Perhaps if he'd left a legacy...

Smoking for fifty years - foolish Arnie..

Leave

I hear a clutter in the kitchen
It's you.
You leave a distateful sense in this house.
Tried to distort me
Did you not?
Twist the emotions I did not have.
Such a failure you were,
such a failure

I live the life of a
nomad. I drag my belongings with me
through the snow, ice
while you live the life of a
liar. Forever a slave to your stories,
lies. Trust me,
you won't get far.

So I leave with my possessions
and leave with you believing
you had won.
But I leave with my emotions
in tact. I shall drag it
in one piece, even through
tougher times in life.
And unlike your lies,
which stay twisted and permanent,
all I will ever leave
are just marks in the snow.

In Her Words (A Translation)

It's like there's darkness at the edge
of my mind. It gnaws at my thoughts.
Devours it. And they no longer exist
That's what it feels like
 this disease.


I can feel it all going again,
all going....
..........................................................
...............son.....................................,
.................................................
....................................
.........(..........)....................
.........soldiers................!
..........................
....ring.............
.............
............
........
what?

Did I tell you
about the time I went on holiday

No?
I didn't think so.
I have a story to tell you
but it seems to elude me,
 the details of it...
...some times I question
whether it's real.
Polar bears in South Africa?
Or perhaps a brown bear?

My darling grandchild,
I hope to see you
soon.
Buy me the chocolates
I loved to eat as a child
You know which ones I like.
I hope to see you soon.

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


Who are you?

"I'd rather be a Comma than a Fullstop"

 
.

,

it's called a semicolon.

Habit

It's 1pm.

Time for my crumpet and brussel sprouts. Time to sit down in front of the laptop and type away mindlessly about my thoughts on life. What do I think of the crumpet?

It's 1.02pm.

Time to listen to some Coldplay and imagine myself away from the four walls of my room. I'm standing at the edge of a cliff - I can fly (or so I can in my head)

It's 1.15pm.

Time for my third cup of coffee. Black, bitter and strong. I have soy milk but it's not going into my coffee (as it normally doesn't)

It's 1.17pm.

Time to sit down with my coffee and listen to Coldplay again. Black, bitter and strong.

It's 3.30pm.

Time for a walk. I throw on a jacket and walk out the door. It's raining - never mind - I can still go for a walk. Rain, shine, snow or ice. I walk through the park on the way to town. I know the route so well I hardly notice it as I walk past. I know this route all too well.....

It's 6pm.

I'm back. Drenched, cold and tired.

It's 6.05pm

Time for another cup of coffee to warm me up and wake me up. The water boils. I pour it into my cup - black, bitter and strong.

"I turn the music up"

"Maybe the trees are gone"

"I feel my heart start beating to my favourite song"

"And heaven is in sight"

"I turn the music up
I've got the records on"

"I rather be a comma than a fullstop"

"Nobody said it was easy"

"Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so

I'm going back to the start"
 

Stir-Crazy

Up and down High Street I go
the cobbled street I am so familiar with
the shops I've seen so many times
the people I know from my countless walks

Up to the cathedral
to photograph the same damn building
to cover each nook and cranny
with scanning eyes.

Around the park,
Again, and again, and again
The sight of flowers were almost damaging
Their same-ness taunted me

Up and down High street I go
cobbled streets, shops and people,
Up to the cathedral
damn damn damn.
Around the park
Around and around. Fuck those flowers.
Up and down High Street I go....

People of the Past

I dropped the box of photographs as I was tidying up the room.

Photographs spilled out of the box and lay splayed out on the floor. They spread out like branches on a tree, the one closest to me being the earliest photo I had of myself.

2006
I was sat on a friend's bed smiling, with my glasses askew (typical of a 15-year-old who couldn't give two fucks about looking stupid in a photo). I only ever smiled for photos.

2007
I was stood amongst my classmates. My hair was a mess and I had displayed a small smirk on my face. A time hardly worth doumenting, admist preparations for my GCSEs - Eleven subjects: Malay Language, English Language, English Literature, English for Science and Technology, Modern Mathematics, Additional Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History, Moral Studies - I got 4 As.

2008
I was standing on the beach with five others. We were at camp. Sunburned and tired, we looked as limp as a the seaweed clumped at our feet. I could already see the weariness in my eyes.

2009
Last day of boarding school. In the background, I could see a friend crying and hugging fellow junior boarders. In contrast, I was sat on a bench, smiling meekly, eyes dead.

2010
I was stood with friends in the kitchen of one of the student halls. Toilet paper lay strewn around us. Too much of a good night perhaps? But I looked at me - it was like I wasn't even there. Eyes dead, body limp - I could only ever just manage to smile for photos.

There are no photos of myself for 2011. All I had as proof of my existence were the countless photos of everything but myself - trees, squirrels, buildings, random passer-bys. I spend so much time hidden behind the lens but it's where I feel safest. I don't need to be reminded of how I've changed.

I pile up the photos once more and place the photo of myself from 2006 on the top - that's the only photos worth remembering - goofy teenager, glasses askew, deceiving the world with nothing but a smile.

"Mam, we're playing funerals now"

The view of the cemetery crossed me at the corner of my eye. I was on a bus, going at 50kph on the small winding roads of Surrey. The bus stopped at the junction, waiting for the traffic line to turn green. I turn around and take a second look at the cemetery and took note of how old some of the gravestones were - chipped and moss-devoured, the headstones' details were lost to the running of time and age.

The light turns green.

Just before we sped off down the countryside, I noticed a small old woman kneeling by a headstone with flowers in her hands. Could she be the only visitor this cemetery had left?

The bus began to move and we turned around a corner.

I lost sight of the old woman and the cemetery but the thought of a lone visitor lingered. I wondered how it must feel to be her, the only one left who seemed to have any longingness to visit the dead loved one. Where were the other funeral-goers who cried over the coffin of the dead? Were they all merely playing the role of 'Mourner'?

I got off the bus at the Bird in Hand. In the pub, there was a loud chanting of the birthday song and I knew that all those singing were just playing the role of "Friend".

Something Amazing

The twang of the guitar
in the cold winter's air, holding
the note in eternity
to captivate the listeners,

and onlookers. I shall not say
what I wanted them to see, I just wanted them
to sink -
sink into the melody, nostlagia
and hope for the better tomorrow.

The sky cried silently onto the pavement.
The spectators left and I took
the guitar home with me
to be laid next to a burning fire
to dry away the emotions
but I knew that there were stains on my listeners.
They had gone home with it,
drenched.

And I Lose my Thoughts..

The storeroom is empty - I mean, I am the only one in there with the books and the files and dust-covered boxes. There really is not much in here but the four walls - and the books and the files and the dust-covered boxes.


I wonder if books could talk?

I consider the possibility of life within this room. I'm the only one breathing in here. With every exhalation, more hot cabon dioxide seems to burden the atmosphere. That's how small it is in here.

I can hear the mysterious tinkling of mugs.

Coffee-stained mugs sit behind the small stack of books. I know they are there even if I can't see them. I know this because I put them there, to hide them from the boss who always grumbles at the sight of dirty mugs.

Omnipotence. I know everything. I am the only one with a mind in here.

I love this feeling of knowing everything. I am a level of intelect above these books and I am more well-versed about the present than these files and boxes. I snicker at the thought of this power - I am in control.

Suddenly, the door slams open

"What are you doing in here?"

And reality is calling...

So Real

Sometimes I wonder what my eyes are telling me - is the sky really as blue as it seems? Or is all I sense based on what I was told to believe, want to believe?

I stare at myself in the mirror.

Distortion...

Is this what is real or what I want to see? I pull out a fisheye lens from the bottom of my camera bag and stare through it. I watch the warped space of the room dance in front of me and wonder whether this perception was more real than my own raw perception of myself.

I drop the lens and it lies by my right foot - I remember how I could once see the veins snake beneath my skin. Now they were embedded under flesh - flesh that shouldn't be there.

I leave the lens on the floor and think of perception no more.

Days Gone

I cry about it less these days...and I think about it in moderation

I still get glaze-eyed in Tesco and confused and indecisive in the health food shops. But I know it's all an after-effect.

Although many days have gone since the worst and many negative instances have flashed by, I am no different from the initial days of the symptoms. But what is different is that I now know where my line stands and where my self should stand.

I think my self stands a good distance away from the edge.

Tingle

One year on and I still sigh at the thought of it. I play the songs I played all that time ago and try to make sense of the journey I've made so far.

Somehow, I'm still not happy..and I question whether I ever will.

I still remember the times when I could fit between the gaps of the door left ajar and disappear into the crowd of clubbers without my presence ever being noticed by the people around me. I wonder whether I could still do it and whether I should still try to do it.

It is just a tingle...a reminder of what I used to be and what I'm still contemplating of being (in time...)

A Sudden Sense of Nothing

Lacking in Everything

This is going to be a rather frank post - no beating around the bush with literary, emotional shit. This is an opinion and pretty spectacular one at that.

So it's been a good four years since I left secondary school and I'm now at the end of my 2nd year in university - and I come across a blog, bright pink, with the initials of its author brandished at the top left-hand corner. My jaw dropped: I'd recognise those initials even in my next life. I realised it was that of a teacher from school and of course, memories of a slightly more than less satisfactory experience in school came flooding back. Don't get me wrong - yes I paid a fucking unbelievable amount of money to go to that school, but it wasn't worth a single penny (or sen, if we're being currency term-conscious). This particular individual is definitely a contributing factor to my experience

The ideas he writes about in his blog - absolutely, spectacularly laughable. It's a joke, a motherfucking shitty joke with no respect for what education should really be about. A talent competition? Using the school as a host for this publicised event?

Don't get me wrong...I do believe talent competitions are a great way of showcasing talent which my be left buried under academia but this seems more like a publicity stunt much like the Weirs and their 161m quid. But what's at risk with this publicity? For one, the students - while it's important for schools to recognise other talents in students, it is still a place of ACADEMIC LEARNING. I think with these talent competitions, the school's focus is being sidetracked and all they're going to be left with are students who are themselves going to have a very distorted focus on life. Secondly, the school's reputation - it was bad enough that in 2007 the school was already recognised as one of the most commercialised schools - what are the public going to think about it by the time 2012 rolls around?

Ok am done with my slightly childish and exaggerated rant. I need sleep. Hence, why I'm on a sleep-deprived rampage

On the Verge

Receiving an overwhelming number of comments was enough to make me feel as if I was torn down the middle and stomped on. I speak of my encounter  with hurtful words with a mask on - I smile but it's all a pretend play which I have become accustom to over the years.

Words can reduce one to tears or send them of on an insanity rampage, but I swallow mine and smile - smile to show the world the words mean nothing to me although they mean the world to me (in a pessimistic sense). Essentially I'm lying not only to the world but also to myself. As time goes on, I will eventually believe that every smile reflects happiness despite knowing that it began as nothing more than a cover up of my hurt.

So right, I will smile at you always, lie to you always just because that's what everyone wants to see. No one wants a grouch...everyone wants a liar.

Age

We dissipate into age
disappearing essence and disappearing identity;
The prime is gone andwe can only
regret not relishing in it ealier.

The pictures say it all
You grow old and disintegrate;
No one told you about this in school;
If ony you could turn back te clock.

Hands tremble, legs quiver
under the weight of your frailness;
Your life is at the end;
The end point is only coming closer.

The Words You didn't say but I Heard.

Midnight.

Textbooks scattered around me - its pages opened to chapters on "The Brain and Emotions", dictating how the brain accounts for our emotions

But I was distracted - distracted by the words you were sending across to me through Instant Messaging. I read it and sat and thought about them before carefully articulating my response to you. So I decided that I would stop sugar-coating my words and give you my frank opinion.

You didn't like it. You didn't like the fact that I knew what you were trying to say without you putting it down in words. You didn't like the fact that I successfully scrutinised you. You didn't like that fact that I knew you this well. You tell me the problems and I advised you but you deflected my words off. You tried to change the subject but I keep you rooted to the topic. You hated it. You were angry. Eventually, you went offline and left me sitting there with more criticism left unsaid, sitting on the edge of my fingers.

I went back to work, flipping through the pages of "The Brain and Emotions" but my head was whirring with the words I never got to tell you. You built up a barrier and ran away the moment the barrier looked like it was going to fall. The mind built the wall but your emotions made you run.

They don't explain this in the textbooks.

The Most Romantic Time

Being alive is like being in your house, your home. You live in the comfort of consciousness and within the familiarity of reality. You waltz in and out of each room as you flit in between different aspects of your life - work, family friends - and every now and then something grows in each room as you get older. However, when it is time for all of it to end, you know it is time to step out the front door and never return. As you approach the door, the walls crack and the ceiling leaks. The colour begins to melt away and the furniture, the memories, start to creak and break down. How does it feel to open that door and look out into the unknown? How does it feel to put one foot out the door but still have the other one still inside, clinging to life? But when you let go and relinquish your life to its mortality, is there not a final merge of life with death as you slip out the door? How does it feel to let go of life and venture into death?

xx

Tight-rope

My sanity seems to be digging it's heels into the ground and getting ready for the war ahead. I tread the fine line which separates the good and the bad, and the rational and the irrational. I tip over every now and then onto the darker side of the two but always manage to pull myself back onto the line. That's right, I never allow myself to go full on into the right side of things. I always need to be on that line - that bloody imaginary line which only I seem to believe exists. So if that line didn't exist what would happen? Would right blur unexpectedly into wrong? Would I be split between the two, toppling over from the lack of a guide? No...I would fall off the dimension completely and will keep falling until I find another dimension to land on - another dimension which has a distinct line.

Over the Line

It feel like I doubled over at a few crossroads and hesitated to cross the train tracks - and when I did try to cross the train tracks, I was run over by the oncomig train. Basically, I was hit by misfortune despite my efforts. In any case there seems to be a misunderstanding about the "you'll get what you deserve" concept. Unfortunately for us, nature didn't adopt that concept and it is only part of humanity's fallacies. Justice and fairness isn't a reality - it's a morality...and unfortunately it's probably the most ludicrous expectation we could possibly have.

Should I forget?

There are whispers and snickers which I could here from my seat.


I can hear what they are saying about me - it was in a tone which was more condescending than undserstanding. Makes me wonder whether I was meant to forget and move on...

Unbelievably long ago.

I'm reading studies which go back as far as the 1930s and I think How can anyone think about children relationships with their parents when the world was in the brink of a disaster.

I hold the perception that pehaps these psychologists are just so deep in their theories and their studies that the world did not matter to them


Fast forward to the 1990s, and I read studies by Pons on brain lesions in rats and the multitude of detailed analysis he and colleagues about the brain and I think Oh my god. All this goes on and I'm ony just born at that time. Unbelievable

Enter the 20th century and there's a study by Defeyter and German about how children perceive their environment in terms of functional fixedness. Defeyter & German (2000). The year 2000? I was only 9 years old - sitting in a small dusty classroom with 30 other students. The only thing I was probably thinking about that time was what show I was going to watch on the telly when I got home.

Now, I sit in front of my laptop while listening to James Blunt's "These are the Words". I am away from home and on my own, reading all these studies which have fought the arguments against them and travelled through unscaved throught time's void. Now they are finding their way into my undestanding but I still think: Some of these were dated to before my existence. Those that were...well..I never thought I'd be reading about them now, almost 20 years since my birth.

That was an unbelievably long time.

Time Travel - Blogs and More

I revisited my old blog and had a good laugh at the times in which my frame of mind and perceptions were completely different to how they are now.

I ravelled in my sarcasm (though I still do) and took the piss out of anyone who was close to me. I wonder how the world put up with me. I don't doubt that I was funny but I was horrendously detached from everyone. Sort of how you'd imagine the lonely character hiding away in the corner, murmuring to himself about everyone else.

So days have changed. And things are no longer the way they used to be. Not a particularly bad thing but it does indicate a somewhat changed me. I don't want to say I have matured because I don't think that was what it really is...I'd say I have changed.

Glad to note however that sarcasm remains alive and well 

Stupid Girl

The inhabitants of my head are telling me that things are going wrong. I don't have the books I need for revision, I don't have a proper plan for my future and I don't have any drive to make things better. Surely there's something wrong. But I think the most painful thing is that nobody knows that things are in fact taking a turn for the worse. I'm alone in this, and alone in this feeling of guilt, frustration and anger. If only I never went down this route and if only I had known earlier on how stupid I really was.

When I noticed...

It did come to a point when life was just held back b stupid rutines and compulsive behaviours which for the sake of my sanity would not leave me alone. Nights spent angry and days spent frustrated were the only things within my view. To everyone else who did not know me, I was just a person who had her priorities screwed up and her head in the fucking clouds


For those who'd understand me, they empathised.