In Continuum.

Random Little Somethings

This entry is going to be thoroughly random. Or rather, i am going to try to make it feel that way, because there are too many thoughts flowing around my head right now, floating all around me and if i don't grab them, they are going to drift on out of my bedroom window and into the darkening night. That's the way thoughts are to me, they always feel like a drop of paint into a clear water, and if you don't take notice of it, the colour will soon disappear and blend into the water body. That's how thoughts are to me, like all else that are good in this world, temporary and volatile.

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Random Thought #1: I like the smell of Kallang MRT Station

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It was a humid school day i remember, and we were sitting under the staircase. The row tables were seldom taken anyway, and the two of us occupied the innermost benches and discussed our days there. She was an art student from the literature class, and she showed me a piece of poem they were studying on that week. She opened up my eyes to literature interpretation, on the representations of certain words in respect to the poet's emotions, as well as the usage of colours and so many other wonderful aspects of the English language. It was an eye-opener i must admit, and for some reason the conversation drifted off to other artistic expressions that the both of us wanted to attain one way or another.

I told her about my dream of carrying a guitar all around the country, or some other foreign country, it didn't matter. Either alone or with a friend, and then plug in our guitars at a random spot and start to play a song. After it is done, or after a full set piece, we will leave the place with no money involved whatsoever. It's only going to be the hunger of self-expression, to satisfy this dream of playing at a random venue and to satisfy a random crowd, and not have people come into a place just to see you perform. The idea was, and still is, a dream to me. And i told her about it that afternoon about three years ago. I remember her being interested with my passion with music, and we talked a lot into that realm before her own 'artistic expression' came along.

She told me about it, and made me swear never to copy her idea, since i thought it was ingenious. I'm not sure if somebody has already done that, but i don't think anybody did it just yet. She told me this, that she intends to get a blank piece of paper, which i about A3 size, and then go onto the street with it. Walking around town, she will ask a random pedestrian to write something random on it, or to vent their frustration about life, work, their partners, parents, anything. As long as the emotions are true and the words are real, it didn't matter what the stranger wrote. Just write anything, or even a random ball of scribble, it didn't matter to her at all. That was art to her, and i was positively inspired. Random acts of art, that was something, i thought. That was something.

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Random Thought #2: I like the pressure of the side of her head against my chest. It makes me feel safe.

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Saturday night at the computer table, four years ago on a random April evening. Frou Frou's song was playing over the speakers, something about boxes of chocolates and the dumbing down of love. The lonely sound of piano, the sad broken vocals of Imogen Heap, accompanied the soft sound of the tip of the pencil scratching against the plain white paper. I was supposed to be studying for something, was it maths? Or was it Economics? I don't remember anymore, but the rush of emotions that came over me like a cold shower. The bunch of waste unused paper were clipped together by my mother who was an avid conservationist, and the blank pages at the back provided the perfect avenue for recycling: For my maths workings.

But that night i was distracted by my own thoughts, strayed away from the work that was at hand and into a realm of self-destruction. There wasn't a button for ignition, no blaring alarms on the walls with flashing red lights, just the turmoil that was inside, raging on mercilessly as i stared on into the computer screen at her picture. Her mother was in it, and she herself was carrying her baby sister, who is more than ten years her junior. But she looked lovely in that picture, almost motherly. The way her arms wrapped around the bottom of her sister, and the way she smiled despite the weight of it all, she was so beautiful in that picture.

The pencil weaved dark gray lines across the plain white paper, the wrong ones erased with the right ones. Over and over, i edited and tried. But it didn't work, it just didn't, and with the music playing on repeat over the speakers there was a sudden surge of sadness inside of me. It wasn't the stupidity that i felt only months ago, or the self-accusations that i have been doing to myself. It was the utter disappointment and disgust perhaps, that i wasn't able to draw her, the way i was capable of with her mother and sister. Somehow, nothing that i sketched of her looked right, and nothing seemed to fit at all. It was the materialization of my failure, and with Imogen Heap's voice pounding those iron nails into my heart, the first tear was shed to a song, that very night before the computer as they fell and dissolved into the drawing paper, which was later crushed and dumped into the rubbish bin.

A strange urge of spontaneity overwhelmed me then, and the closest things i had at hand were a piece of paper with that pencil i had. So that was how it happened, with the song finally changed, i was able to allow my hand to weave it's own route over the paper in proper alphabets this time, into a letter to no one. I wrote a letter on the back of an advert about car rental, but i didn't care too much back then. I remember myself writing uncontrollably, with the tip of the pencil slowly wearing away as the pressure of my hand grew harder and harder. The letter was addressed to her, but i didn't have the mind to send it. It was a letter to her, but in a way to myself as well. I wrote about how we met that fine morning months ago, how i noticed her through that crowd of newly admitted JC students, and how her long jet black hair had me mesmerized, standing in the middle of the crowd and forgotten my steps.

I wrote and wrote and wrote, and everything was spontaneous and random. But it didn't matter then what i wrote, but the fact that i was writing it out made me feel better, a whole lot better in fact. It was like a constant stream of poison out of a hole i dug in my skin, the way they kept flowing out in dark flowing lines of words in the dim glow of my yellow lamp played tricks on my eyes. It was therapeutic and totally out of impulse back then, and i remember writing even that down in the paper. I wrote about three pages of words, all on the back of unused papers, and i wrote until there were no spaces left at all. I squeezed in between lines, went along the edges of the paper and even upside down, but i didn't care. I breathe a sigh of relief, glad that i was alive even at the end, and burnt the random piece of letter to no one.

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Random Thought #3: The red neon lights above Pow Sing Chicken Rice is making me crave for it.

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17/1/07; 9.04pm (WED) Marina Macs

"...I want to sit in the smoking area.
Shrouding myself in mist seems like an alluring
manner to escape to another world..."

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I am beginning to lose myself, i thought to myself. Recognising the person in the bathroom mirror is becoming an everyday chore. I wondered about the dark rings under my eyes, the ulcer in my lower lip and most of all, the tired eyes staring back at me. The true honesty of the mirror can be misleading, but at the same time too true for your own comfort. Who is this man staring back at me in the mirror, with the scruffy looking hair and those tired eyes?

I cannot recognise myself anymore, the way i used to. I wonder if i have been sleeping much lesser, or eating much lesser as well. Neither actually explained the stranger behind the mirror, not in the traditional way of course. I feel worn down now, like tires after miles of traveling upon a tarmac road. I felt worn down because...well, i have no idea why i feel this way. If i am i might be able to do something about this ailment, if it is an ailment in the first place? This disease eating my insides out, like a insect being trapped on a spider's deathly web, and the fangs of the spider digging into your body and eating you up from the inside. Yeah, i am caught in a web right now, but the face i see on the eight-legged monster is myself, how abstract is that? Like a scene from a nightmare, a nightmare i am dying to wake up.

I miss my old self, the person i used to know. It must be this new life i am not getting used to, too good for myself in relative perhaps? I am speaking in tongues i do not understand now, and this is getting really random. I have a feeling that if i go on all the way tonight - which i believe i have the capability of - i might be able to go on and on without stopping like that. Perhaps by the end of it i might be able to recognise and hopefully, love myself a little more. Because for now, i need more than just assurance from others, but the assurances that stems from the inside. I don't recognise myself anymore, and i don't know why. I need my old self back, i need to find him in my own hill of emotional waste. But this hill is huge, and i have only my bare hands to dig through the wreckage. But what can i do at this point but to do this? Here goes nothing...

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Random Thought #4: "...I will grow old, fat and ugly too. But i want to do all that with you. Let's love each other even if we smell like Tiger Balm all the time, okay?

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Random Thought #5: "Let's get married..."

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Random Thought #6: This room is too empty without you.