as much as everyone hates me for this,

xanga.com/GOINGSOUTH

sorry and relink!

AHHAHA i’m using this “girl in green” skin cos junhui dared me. it’s so retarded. he’s now using the banana skin (kudos to me, lovelove)!

eh sorry i changed back, it was totally destroying my photos.

i love lala and qingyi so much- my stability comes with my school friends, where i can look up and see fussy nat, laughing joylynn, meltan edging between laughter and care, melgoh doing splits in the midst of the classroom, and i can say, this were happiness. tuesday i walk into the classroom and see a bag of cream-coloured crepe paper petals, spilling its contents over the dust-grey floors, soft flakes of memory, powdering.

someone asks, so what have you been up to today? and i realise, i don’t really know where i’ve been.

i don’t know if sometimes i’m too much the girl by the window, quiet, distant, drawn into a swirling contemplative universe of her own. but i shouldn’t think too much about myself, that’s where the trouble begins. i will think about kiu, pris, about plans for next year with natalie, about losses, about beauty, reading, my family, the wedding. i will not enclose myself. i will let go of baggage, but not completely; i will not exclude. i will not say “i will” and forget. i will write, but my life shall not depend on writing. there are other things more important, things to put in place.

by ren jie and lynette, in their best act of randomness to date.we wanted to write a story about a little boy, kinda like a children’s book that’s small and cute, yet epic (in his words, “intellectually orgasmic”). epic because this little boy is representative of every little boy out there (: Tim woke up on a sunny morning with something misplaced. Beneath the reassurances of daylight and bedclothes was a gaping incompleteness that no words, no knowledge and no satisfaction could fill. Groping for answers in the dark hole of his psyche, he peered out of his window, when a flash of red in the garden below caught his eye. That flicker of red yearning led his diffident little feet with wanderlust that carved his diffident little soul, and carried him into the garden. A little red ball, lay innocuously in the bushes. It wasn’t anything special. It was just a little red ball. But he knew that somehow, that this was what he was yearning for, what he needed to find, that final piece that snapped into the jigsaw of his soul. There it lay, within the rubble of broken dreams, the bushes of his creation, by the delicate fruit that had been borne of his hunger. The garden, the ball, the dream of reaching the ball and feeling it tranquil in his little hands: the products of his longing. And the more he hankered, the more distant his soul seemed, and the more his little red wishes fell dispersed in his little red anguish.Time flitted by in a meaningless, pointless chase with no end. Somehow, no matter how far he ran or how fast he moved, the ball ended up in the same place as before: a fraction of an inch out of his reach. And yet, somehow, he knew he could never stop chasing. He could never stop chasing because it gave him purpose, gave him life. The thought of that little ball lying somewhere out there just out of his reach gave him the strength and the energy to move on, somehow feeling that if he just stretched that little bit more, the ball would be within his grasp.The ball was his words, the ball was their expectations, the ball was the deed, the ball was the god whose rules sculptured his life, the life and death upon which the neighbours laid their homes. Yet, the ball was nothing, and the search for the ball was everything.Day by day, the little red ball fell further out of reach. It had dissolved into a mere dot, and all dreams of holding the little red ball had shrunken into red pin-sized speckles in Tim’s mind. The yearning grew larger and the pain spread like a virus within himself. Until no more. By sheer wanton desperation, his dreams were smashed by the very humanity in his soul. The pathos, the pain, the mortal helplessness that framed the wretched portrait of his kind in an eternal redness.The man watched from outside the garden sanctuary as the small boy collapsed to the ground and cried. For the better part of the day, he had seen that boy chase the ball, catch it, then throw it away, just beyond his own reach. But each time he threw it away it got a little further, until now each toss was barely contained by the four walls of the garden. And the young boy had finally given up, and admitted his mortality and frailty, recognized his limits, and accepted the inevitable defeat.The man felt a tug of compassion. The boy’s pain was of his own making: it was useless to try and every time he struggled forward his impossible goal would only be further away. For a moment, he felt tempted to take the boy out of the garden, to show him the true light, to show him the drab colours of the real world and dispel the picture of his own torture that he was painting.But then, with a smile, the man gave the ball a nudge, and rolled it towards the boy. For within the four safe walls of the garden at least, innocence could remain.

tulips and chimneys says:
you know 
on times like those 
you feel so content 
i feel as if i dont need anything else 
just these reassurances 
of rain 
mornings 
and coffees 

FREEDOM!! says:
you know when I feel like that?
when I get a good book
and like sit and read it
and get lost in the story
then I feel so happy
and so lost

we all have these comforts. it’s good to feel elemental, and not let the big things consume you. it draws you to the basics, and what really matters.

five things to say
and i have a feeling this post is going to sound like an enormous stupid riddle (you know the kind) that you won’t want to read.

1) i’m still super sorry about it, and i have yet to tell you everything. i’ve got loads to say, not just to excuse myself, but to let you see. me, everything that’s happened, the crazy inner feelings that spiral downwards and surpass “hi, bye, i’m sorry” and whatever it seemed to be. i’m afraid you won’t let me in anymore, after all i’ve done, or not done. talk to me?

2) i don’t really want to live two lives anymore: the day life, where everything is sturdy and in place, and i have my friends like smily lock that last 5 years and forever, and the night life, outside school and work, where everything dies in the likeness of incense and lies and is transient as love on a stereo. i’m constantly scrutinised here, and my every action is magnified in the eyes of strangers. i would it were easier to sort out, but often it isn’t, as things are.

3) i’m afraid of what’s coming next year, i’m so used to great friends, happiness crawling out of bodies to be released in great shouting or laughter, the open sadness and comforts. the year is coming to a close, and there’s a lot coming up: the book, more debate competitions, my brother’s wedding, meeting my mentor?, saying goodbyes… and i’m so unresolved, it scares me. thank goodness for nat tan and possibly belle next year, for reassurances i need.

4) if all else that is normal fails, if even my everyday life is unshackled, i will read a thick book in bed, drink tea, buy something silly like a plant or a goldfish, place it on my table gently (that it was warmth and certainty i were carrying), and be thankful.

5) hur hur things are going to be fine, because i want them to be. thanks so much qing yi for the help, you’re a real sunshine. and i’m so glad i talked to mrs lee about it. i feel sure, more steady on the ground. i will learn and be better. i have many things to do, many things to learn i knew i ought to have learnt that got lost in the realms of i don’t know how.

ya la ya la, allow me this one last narcissistic deed. i like my photos in black and white. it’s easier that way, to look up from the stark flame of a premature memory and see a colourful, more coveted world. i need something simple now. like a hug, a word, a promise. not a “it’ll be fine”- that’s the most difficult thing, the most supercilious vindication, the most suicidal excuse for a memory.

up into the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it

you will(kiss me)go

out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it

(kiss me)you will go

on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it

you will go(kiss me

down into your memory and
a memory and memory

i)kiss me,(will go)

/edit: i love smily lock so, so much. you understand, you really do.

tulips and chimneys says:
haha you 
dear 
are wise beyond words 
beyond any geog marks 
any type of marking 

and thanks geoff too!

and you: i’m really really sorry.

i love you so much 2CO, i love you crazy beautiful people. today was, indescribable really, i couldn’t bear to lose any of you, love love love! but of course i will remember how sammie pushed me into the pool la, the pingpong battles, the intense camwhoring, mangopomelonatadecocosago (kudos to tee), the melodrama, and the waterfights, and the wonderful happy birthday(s), and the beauty of tonight.

/edit: i don’t have photos of the really crazy things, because, well, i was too busy doing them to shoot them (: life over lit, i swear, anytime. not just in this context. i really would like my free time back. but then again- for the book. we’ll do this for the book. the book, and the life after.

i paid a visit to this totally bizarre hair salon today at holland v today (well i’ve gone quite a few times cos i trust the hairdressers there, unlike those in the place i got my bangs massacred), cue dimmed lights black leather armchairs and black gothic wallpaper, everyone in skinny jeans and cowboy boots. and i swear hairdressing is a sensual art— here, you’re paying not only for the haircut but also the experience. i feel as if these hairdressers, in the darkness of the room, they see right through me. they’re dealing with a separate entity here: the hair is animate, it is pulsating in a heartbeat of its own, and it quivers under human touch. totally wicked: the free massage. in this blackened room, black ceilings walls basins and again, it’s bizarre, being touched by someone so personally on a completely rational level.

he says, “what are your plans then?”
“i don’t know, so damn far away. something to do with writing?”
“shit, no la, i mean for tonight. are you going clubbing?”

my sister used to keep her hair long as an act of defiance (wild thick hair, much akin to my own, drives my mother crazy) as well as exhibit her bohemian tendencies, they say many divorced women cut their as a symbol of emotional baggage; maybe hair is a manifestation of our thoughts- roots from the inside to the outside (i wrote, in a fairly bad poem: “he draws an immutable circle with a large towel, fits it on the halo of your thoughts, as a crown”).

anyway, when the hairstylist said, “we’re gonna take out some weight, ya?”, i was glad for the mounds of so many thoughts, so many months being stripped from myself, until i felt bodily pure, funnily new. i think i’m a sucker for weird concepts (i remember one day, i was wearing a hair band that made me severely unhappy, only i wouldn’t realise the cause). and i started being the old me, tree-hugger and all.

Mugger-iffic lol says:
what’s the you from long ago?

bodily harm says:
detached, very drifty
in love with weird things like uhm trees and the sun
and i look outside the bus window with a new lease of life 
omg see and cheesy too 

anyway, along with my driftiness, renjie and i decided to play chasing cars by snow patrol and shoot me down by boy kill boy at the same time. the result: a trance-like, hypnotic state. i feel so drugged out now. thank goodness for renjie to scold me when i’m lost.

i got tagged! like a billiongazillionkapow years ago. but i shan’t do the later part, cos im a lazy slob and i’ve done it before.

18.Is no.9 a male or female? (lynne)
female but if she was a guy (we’ve discussed this) she’d be in VS. HAHAHHAHA. she wants to be in ACS(I) tho.

ehhh. you hwachong!

answer the following questions.

1. the person who tagged you is?
ale & tass
2. your relationship with her is?
super senior and super junior! and i’m super wonderful.

3. list your 5 impressions of her:
1. crazy/ smartass!
2. super endearing/ indiefreak- very individualistic
3. free entertainment, whoo!/ tasteful (yah yah i know you’re very good at spotting cute guys!)
4. retarded yet intellectual/ artsy
5. lost in another realm of blurness/ eloquent (aka glib aka good flirt!)

4. the most memorable thing she has done for you?
jumped on me and scared me (incessantly), bought me this huge blue whale cushion that i carried around at U14s! / scolded me after i scolded her for cutting queue, made me try her (scary-looking but excellent) cookies

5. the most memorable words she has said to you?
eh i don’t know. like, “my name is ale but you can call me tonight”? her violent actions speak louder/ “look i said you were the sexiest person in the whole world”

6. if she becomes your lover, you will?
eh whyyyy? i will tell them, “if you love me, honey, you will let me go” (hur hur plagiarised from miss singapore!)

7. if she becomes your lover, things she has to improve on will be?
scaring me less/ becoming more macho.

8. if she becomes your enemy, you will?
get her chocolate, chocolate’s her cure/ scold her for being my enemy!

9. if she becomes your enemy, the reason will be?
i stole her chocolate!/ she cut queue in front of me! ohr hor. heh i don’t mind if she cuts behind.

10. the most desired thing you want to do for her now is?
eh? tell her to mug hard and do well and do us proud / tell her to send me her cookies!

11. your overall impression of her is?
retarded and lovable/ an intelligent bimbo

12. how do you think people around you will feel about you?
wenfei says i’m sleazy all the time. lams says i’m interesting to observe during exams.

13. the character you love of yourself is?
my ability to source for happiness in stupid mundane things when i’m not

14. on the contrary, the character you hate of yourself is?
that arrogant part of me that is selective about love

15. the most ideal person you want to be is?
super pow wow!

16. for people that care and like you, say something to them.
i love you, sunshines!

_________

the park is a great equaliser. today i revisited the boredom, the daydreams the emotionally-charged habitation of my past. the trees, the sun swinging through the breeze and the dead grass where the boys play soccer. i saw ben the ice-cream man, i let my words wander through the wind. and i let dead things amble, leased to the wind. and i left the rose at the table by the big trees, to be swept away by some other godforsaken story but my own.

before reverting to muggerdom: this is damn funny leh!

i try to mug as intensively as falungong!

we’re all shooting ourselves and each other, aren’t we?

i wish you’d never changed. qingyi says, change is constant, it’s human nature. i accept that, really, but i’m frankly afraid of you now. to change is one thing— but to lose yourself in your surface, and sacrifice all that you stood for once, your ambitions, your love, your values, your courage that took you 14 years to muster, and now all dropped for that singular purpose, of the self. this is the most essential, most human hedonism, to allow your soul to be mislaid somewhere in your actions. even when you said you’d never compromise for anything. i don’t blame you, though. i miss you.

i recall feeling this:

it’s all like this because: like how carnality stems from desire, feeling stems from something faceless and incorporeal. and i, silly girl, have too much of a face that masks this inner intangible being that is me. this is me, writing, caught in the body- the extra baggage of someone called lynette, who i’m so entirely sick of being. lynette is happy, she tries to be everybody’s friend, and yet again while she tackles the world and it’s nihilism she begins- she begins to isolate this drifting soul, this innate spirit, me.

doomed love. i don’t think you love me, you love my face. moreover i let you do that. because i’m leaving further, further, yet i can’t let you go. i wish you could just go away, leave me to my own life and leave my soul unsullied… and i wish that this me here, inside of me, could stop latching on to you. it’s not exactly love i feel, more of a tenderness for what you care for and what i know. why do you keep coming back to me? i don’t know if you’re helping me find me or drawing to your lips to your eyes to the very impression of your soul on mine- me or lynette.

but that’s resolved now. being aloof isn’t right, even as it is now, with all the hate and fear i don’t want to live in. no more crafting my words to the mold of deception, no more distance, no more apathy- even my idea of that was skewed before. it’s not about having your words compassionate and full of passion, it’s about immersing yourself in the world, every singular part of it.