Last weekend was awful and I can't help but projecting the heaviness to upcoming weeks.
It was just week 1 and already I felt worn and torn. And this is bad because when I did so, the ghost of the past came haunting altogether. My strategy was to rationalize the fears and feelings, to step back and see the big picture of it all. And I have to do all of this by myself. I woke up everyday feeling that I am going to have my head cut off my body. This, is almost like living in a cell, waiting for the sentence for the crime I have committed. It is sure to be dead sentence, but somehow, deep inside, I still hope to see that it was not that bad, that I can come out of this in one full body.
If anyone tell me that this is just about finishing school and coping alone, I would laugh at how exaggerated the rendition is. But it is, it is.
Starting week 2 with Mozart's Requiem: Kyrie. If there's a God, He would take pity on me. But there doesn't seem to be any.
Been thinking of how deeply in love I am with music. I was high and low, here and there, with and without and survived through it all. As addicting as morphine to my pains, I feel being understood as much as I want to be. Music is a company, like a friend (-only better). In case of obsession, it became like a religion (-only better). Oh maaaan...
In my dream I were grooving with XX's Romy Madley Croft
I have watched several versions of the 'Phantom of the Opera' and I have never loved the musical more than after I watched Sierra Borges and Ramin Karimloo's rendition of it. Ramin especially, played a very endearingly dramatic Phantom.
It took me a while to be able to digest something as full of emotion such as this story. After what I had gone through last semester, I seemed to be more aware of this bundle of impulses and ignorance that I am. It made me want to curl up in a ball everytime I remembered the shameful things that I did in the name of standing up for the thing that I thought made me human. And everyone else thought I was crazy.
I had my Phantom period. (oh yeah that term 'emo' is so mainstream)
Head and heart a universe apart, yet we battled our whole lives working to disentangled these two. And in this world, of sanity and civility, in any case of battle between our head and heart, the head must win.
The head must win. So only in Phantom's cave can one helplessly scream, wail, long and gaze upon love and loss. And Ramin haunted the audience with these scenes which are not possible in this world; we humans live and move on.
That's it, it's split it won't recover
Just frame the halves and call them brothers
Find their fathers and their mothers
If you remember who they are
Over and over they call us their friends
Can't we find something else to pretend?
Like nobody's won and we're safe at the end
In the darkness the film machine's spinning
So let's leave it on
We'll be out in the street
before anyone knows that we're gone
That's it, it's split, it can't recover
Just frame the halves and call them a whole
And chip at the bricks and fill up your pockets
With the pieces of the wall that you stole
The hunt is on, everyone's chasing
Everyone's chasing a shot
A shot rings out, nobody wants it
Nobody wants it to stop
That's it, it's split, it won't recover
Just frame the halves and call them brothers
Find your fathers and your mothers
If you remember who they are
If you remember, if you remember,
if you remember who they are
To a light soul with sentimental tow, yours might be the Lord's humming if He likes to sing.
Ouais, elle est amoureux...
Jeff, say hello to Eva Cassidy for me!
Some tracks that I've been listening to and to which my brain has helplessly attached the memory of the past 4 months.
1. Jeff Buckley - Forget Her
2. Jeff Buckley - We all Fall in Love Sometimes
3. Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should Have Come Over
4. Jeff Buckley - Corpus Christi Carol
5. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
6. Lana Del Rey - Young and Beautiful
7. Pink - Try
8. Alt J - Buffalo Man
9. Les Miserablés 25th Anniversary Concert
10. Churchill - Change
11. Blue Foundation - Watch you Sleeping
12. Blue Foundation - Evo
13. Blue Foundation - Bonfire
14. Fourplay - Bali Run
15. Fourplay - 101 Eastbound
16. Fourplay - Chant
17. Fourplay - I'll Still Be Loving You
18. Dario Marianelli - Atonement
19. Dario Marianelli - Elegy for Dunkirk
20. Phillip Glass - The Poets Act
21. Phillip Glass - The Morning Passage
22. Phillip Glass - The Hours
23. Dave Brubeck - Bluette
24. Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings
25. Jack White - Love is Blindness
3 weeks ago, after I was officially announced to be cleared from dengue fever, my uncle and his wife asked me to go out with their young kids. They were taking the kids to play at an indoor theme park in a mall. They thought they were giving me some kind of recreation, but seriously, I can no longer be hysteric over trampoline after what I had gone through. I thought I had suffered enough that I can no longer feel my trying-to-please button. I had been playing with 7, 5 and 2 year old kids during the day and
cried to yearn for sleep in the night as the memories of throwing
away my beloved kitchen tools in the eviction came upon my mind. I had one of the kids sat on
my lap as I played 'Oggy and Cockroaches' cartoons for them- I wonder if
their mum would still let me do that had she known how I almost killed
myself two months ago. I felt that I was deserving to be pampered after my closest experience to unintentional death.
I felt like a limp inside an armor that kept me on the pose other people ever knew I had been; an innocent girl-next-door on a break from her study. I needed to hide for a while so I could just give in to the gravity. The nearest place I got was studio 1 at the cinema in the mall. They turned off the light and people were seated facing the screen so nobody could watch you. Even just for 120 minutes, I shall have my darkness.
So, I watched 'The Great Gatsby'. The movie was full of visual effects, that I felt my senses were kept being fed with something so grand. It didn't feel right, but alright it did looked aesthetic. However, to me it was not Gatsby's superb house, neither his awesome parties that made him great; it was the opposite. I was expecting more well-timed silences and blandness which I could afford when I read the novel by myself. It was a good movie, only not good enough to be 'The Great Gatsby' movie. I still prefer the BBC old movie version.
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| 'Are you sure? It was ME who played Mr. Gatsby.' |
“I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”I adored Gatsby's determination to become a self-made man, his ability in keeping finding himself amidst all the things he was not, and I shared his blindness upon being crazy about someone who was not crazy about him.
“Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.”
But there is this one thing. One thing that I think I can never relate with is Daisy's beauty.
"she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
The movie played Lana del Rey's single, 'Young and Beautiful' during a montage where Gatsby and Daisy romanced their reunion, which I found to be so fitting with Daisy's character and her level of understanding of everything around her. It has been on my playlist for weeks until now, and I think there is no better version than her studio recording version. She can't sing live yet , and nobody can do the haunting audio effect of sound engineering.
"When a man fell in love with a woman, he would do anything for her.", my uncle told me during the (long) montage, and I sensed his nudging me for what he thought to be my delusion of actually being loved by someone I had just lost.
But who am I, what am I to be so demanding of someone's love. Then, St. Francis came to my mind reciting his famous selfless prayer: "O divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be loved as to love."
Perhaps that's how a divine love saved a soul; how it drove one crazy to desire a love. Stop there and quit seeking to be loved. But seriously, can you just stop there and accept it fully without any resistance? Why was I not wanted enough? What's not in me that keep people from wanting 'to do anything for' me? There was an ocean in front of my eyes and if only I could cover its depth...
Disclaimer: the following is endlessly trivial.
I think I am not beautiful enough to be loved as such. And by that I am stripped of any privileges to be average, mediocre and sometimes, miserable; which ironically is what I am. Shit.
Who doesn't like a beautiful woman? Who could ever say it truly, free of any denial whatsoever, that deep inside his/her heart he/she does not like a beautiful woman? What is more true than liking what our senses have been made drawn into? Everything else is denial, moral flipping or a consolation, you name it.
What could be the worst of being a beautiful woman? She could be a foolish and superficial person. But isn't that the most wonderful thing to be in this miserable world? To be intelligible is to be found out anyway. And if that's not the case, what would be more perfect than a beautiful woman who desire something more than what can be seen and touched?
What about someone who does not like what she is and wants to be beautiful? She got accused of being shallow despite of her condemnation of such impulse in her mind. I thought that it is such a shame for those who fought for feminism, for us, who demanded women emancipation; the ladies want to be treated equally with their brothers the way they are seen as a man within and without, and not ultimately based on what is pleasing to be seen. But there the ladies are, worrying about how plump and short they are without the high heels shoes.
They say God thinks everyone is beautiful the way He created people be. Alright, He is God so He has the very right to impose His idea on what's beautiful- for a good reason, I wish. But I cannot lie to myself. I wish I were taller, slimmer, edgier; I wish I were something else. This is not about someone sanctioning something based on popular culture, that fat is bad, flabby is ugly; I just wish I had something better to cover my incompetence and my shortcomings. I felt that one need to be good looking enough to have an excuse to pass people's merciless carelessness. On the other hand, one could matter nothing at all and still have people's sympathy when she is pleasing enough to look at. I am feeling so bland, halting, and without any conspicuous talent. There I typed those out. Never uglier than ever.
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| Oh, just shut up, Emma. Look at yourself. |
So, the answer to Lana's question: will somebody still love me when I no longer young and beautiful?
Nobody will. Nobody ever did, cos I never were.
Enough enough.
Looking out the door I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners
Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water
And maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong
But tonight you're on my mind so you never know
Broken down and hungry for your love with no way to feed it
Where are you tonight, child you know how much I need it
Too young to hold on and too old to just break free and run
Sometimes a man gets carried away, when he feels like he should be having his fun
And much too blind to see the damage he's done
Sometimes a man must awake to find that really, he has no-one
So I'll wait for you... and I'll burn
Will I ever see your sweet return
Oh will I ever learn
Oh lover, you should've come over
'Cause it's not too late
Lonely is the room, the bed is made, the open window lets the rain in
Burning in the corner is the only one who dreams he had you with him
My body turns and yearns for a sleep that won't ever come
It's never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
It's never over, all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her
It's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
It's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
Well maybe I'm just too young
To keep good love from going wrong
Oh... lover, you should've come over
'Cause it's not too late
Well I feel too young to hold on
And I'm much too old to break free and run
Too deaf, dumb, and blind to see the damage I've done
Sweet lover, you should've come over
Oh, love well I'm waiting for you
Lover, you should've come over
Cause it's not too late
Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.There is no warranty that you would feel any better by doing this. That one could come up with this kind of thinking is an 'advantage' in itself. Indifference, frivolity - for we can see something lowlier than these shallowness, we must give in and creep from beneath.
21 is really not the time you look out of the window and committing the thoughts of "life is..." - it becomes scandalous because it is more of "life is but...". The rest of the world paced their way to different places they would like to go to and passed through me as if I was a ghost.
21 could feel like a thousand year when you have been here and there. I have gone away to find my home, I have felt being not at home, have thought that I have found a home and have lived to see how it left me homeless. There can actually be no place for a soul here on earth, and my desire to leave this life is not that I know any place I could call home somewhere else. There is no place where I could rest my worn out body, there is no good father's gentle stroke on my sweating head, there is no sweet voice telling me how life has turned me this way; everywhere is but a spared space in someone else's house.
Time does not change anything, it only enfolds things as they are. I live only for that I have not died. It happens at 21 that I lost myself.
Life spit back on me, with saliva contaminated with dengue.
Now I am eligible for Les Miserables
Human A
Condition : wanted to kill himself
Dilemma : He knew that by the time he sought help to professionals in the university clinic things would just get uglier if not better. By the time people knew about his condition they would deem you unfit to live his own life, making decisions for him and leaving himself stranded even more unheard.
Solution : Kept everything to himself, met friends to play soccer and shut himself up when the breakdown came; just try to get by... Until the moment he could not take it anymore.
Result : Human A hanged himself to death in his dorm room.
Human B
Condition : just wanted to disappear, too scared of the pain of dying
Dilemma : same with human A but certainly with more problem with loss of hope to humanity, religiously attached
Solution : Sought for professional help, got clinical diagnosed, treated medically, opened up to people, took the break she needs, slowly gathered the strength to recover.
Result : Witnessed the reality of her dilemmas, killed by prejudices, as heroic as a thumbdrive survived in a washing machine.
Remark : The pain of dying is something, but the religion attachment made her think death is even more optimistic than living dead.
Human C
Condition : mentally and socially homeless
Dilemma : needed to be where he was treated unfairly, but he had nowhere to go. Needed help to sort his anger but getting it on the surface only got him questioned by suspicious party; condemned forever guile until he could be proven innocent.
Solution : Got upset, blamed the world for everything, subscribed to hatred and fatalism.
Result : Got really really angry, exploded bombs that killed innocent people
It is a shame for the world of psychology, really. I pitied these people who worked so hard to study the subject, believing that what they were dealing with was something as noble as treating a dying cancer patient. The world is not yet -perhaps never- ready for humanity. It would all make sense when someone came to me with his horrified face and told me that we were actually living among robots. I don't know, maybe we are living dead humans. That's why they put you to a purgatory called mental institution. I'd rather go to hell, or maybe I am curious to see how it is there.
By right we should just kill ourselves when we are suicidal.
Dr. Treves: I pray to God he is an idiot.My mother's biggest fear for me is not that one day I would get pregnant by some guy or commit something that makes me end up in a jail. It is the fact that I feel more than most people do and (perhaps without the capacity of it) think about it.
As dangerous as they are, my thoughts and imaginations have also imparted the most potent humanity of myself. Other people would say knowing the physics of rainbow just kills its charm, but I think the complexity that somehow coexists with its seemingly just-there-to-be-seen physique is something that makes me appreciate it even more.
Mr. Merrick: People are frightened by what they don't understand.We humans miniaturize this gift that only God bestow on us. We term it as being 'sad', 'unwell', 'happy', 'broken', 'excited', 'uplifted' - even worse, label them as good or bad. Lie to yourself, but there it entails the truth that makes is the humans that we are. It is the truth that we can not afford to escape from. It grabs us down and bring us to our knees.
And who are we to judge our emotions? Jesus wept when He lost His dearest friend, He agonized to blood in the garden, He got upset in the temple; how He was truly human. Some people can feel so good of their emotional detachment. But I think like this: however appealing it seems to live a life so efficient and pleasing to others, the truth is that some part of one's life requires him/her to walk along the 'stupid' winding road and how it takes so much more to just be there with all our true selves than making up something based on our convictions.
At least for me. Only by these it all makes sense to me; the-used-to-be cheesy terms of Divine Love, Faith and Hope. That I am loved despite of my ungratefulness and sloppiness, in this very miserable and human way that I am. It is Love in its most loving and unconditional way that I know. That one's life could end up as morbid as suicide, that it could not be thought how things can get any better either in this life and eternity; it is really not our 'hope' and 'faith' that change anything or save any souls. I think it is the vastness that comes together with the realm of God; God is the Hope and Faith in our most hopeless and helpless truth. That my fatalism does not change any single bit of These.
Of course I don't know what's in God's mind. But I am saying this at least for me, at least for people like Joseph Merrick and many other people with 'broken life' be it for his own 'fault' or something grander than that. Psalm 23 may not be the most beautiful thing human ever wrote and (true that) it takes a Joseph Merrick to show me how rich it actually is.
Mrs. Kendall: Mr. Merrick, you are not an elephant man at all. Oh, no... No... You are a Romeo.
Fashion world is trivial. That is even more why we like it. We can just be careless in so believing our senses, exempting ourselves from having to penetrate the depth of life. It is as if horrible things like wars in Middle East never happened, we forgot how broken human's heart can get that looking good no longer stopped people from detonating bombs, we stop bothering thinking of how some people were debilitated with genetic disposition that heavily detracted how others see them as human beings. We look at those lean figures dressed on everything that reminds us of how pleasant and indulging this world can be; the field with wild flowers, the playground, cotton candy, cakes, childhood Disney princess movies, cute puppies, butterfly, willow trees...
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| It all started with this leaf |
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| That someone can imagine a dress like this, wearing the veil that way. |
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| And people can use asparagus as wedding bouquet |
And these Vera Wang's wedding dresses really changed the way I see toilet paper
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| Josh Groban, the guy with angelic voice. Even he is not spared from this. |
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| It is not just me. The live audience laughed so hard when they showed how Ross looked like in his younger year. |