飛べない翼

Once again.

I can’t help it; I watched Lily ChouChou again and yet again (within one week). When Salyu sang her 'Wings that can't fly' and Shiori pulled the strings and beamed watching the eagle-like kites, heart wrenchingly innocent and delicate, and so happy, I wept. Could only weep, and then more weeping. I can’t describe it. just breaks me.

Towards the end I got so tense. Because I could not remember the ending. It's been...eighteen months now, and my memory appears a moth-bitten carpet. I remember...crouching in the dark watching it for the first time with you in the home sty, I remember muffled gasps and tears (was it just me..) and going to bed with heavy heart and my face somewhat swollen and neither of us saying much besides a confused, broken discussion. (think Lily Chou-Chou is in many ways always associated with those hot summer days in Suzhou and the smell of the bamboo mat in your air-conditioned room). I couldn’t remember...what happened to Hasumi after Hoshino died. When he played a few notes on the piano at home and the camera cut to his torso quite still in midair my heart clutched itself and shuddered in fear, fearing that he might have hanged himself and that I have forgotten. (But how could I, if he did such a thing, or anything at all??) The ending came to this scene, billowing sunlight and Debussy, and the resemblance of this to the Love Letter scene struck me only now. My infinite respect and gratitude for Shunji Iwai, for giving closure (like how Ondaatje said a storyteller should do), and calm, pulsing hope.

And I just got more moRE mORE nostalgic for Kokyu and Salyu-as-Lily Chou-Chou. Saw this fictional discography of Lily Chou-Chou on the wiki page, beautiful, Lily-styled names, why can't they produce all of them?!

• 1stアルバム『ジュエル』　

1. みずうみ
2. 三つの扉
3. 踊る魚
4. 愛の実験
5. 犬の眼
6. オルゴオル

• 2ndアルバム『エロティック』

1. 共鳴
2. 孤独の瞬間
3. ビデオテープ
4. 化粧をしない生活
5. 家
6. エロティック
7. 約束の日
8. 指先
9. 悲しい瞳
10. 沈黙の木

• 3rdアルバム『呼吸』

1. アラベスク
2. グライド
3. 友達
4. 土曜日の郵便
5. 飛べない翼
6. セーター
7. 飛行船
8. 花の瞳
9. 九月の雨の心臓
10. 回復する傷

Unfinished letter

I dug through the paper mess on my desk and found this—an undated note, scribbled in haste and addressed to you—which must have been early this August, as I was sitting in the plane waiting for the take-off to Singapore. I wonder what I had in mind to say to you and didn't go on to say. In all probability just restlessness.

Dear Jude,

The plane has yet to take off. I suddenly have this strong urge to write to you. A young lad is standing down there from my window, blond hair ruffled, face pink and lovely with the sunlight on it. I wonder what he's doing in here, working as an airport staff, here in Hong Kong, somewhere he doesn't belong. On this bright morning (too bright, and too many leaden clouds in the sky). I am unprepared to be moved by youth--shadowless youth that one can do anything in/with. I take out my crimson pashmina and wind it round my shoulders, feeling ancient and ageless, as if this warm, dark wool piece is the perfect shield to the piercing, luring beam of that pink robustness. Youth, whatever happened to mine? "When was that innocence-lost experience?" M asked, months ago. "I don’t know. Probably the time when the chickens I reared were ruthlessly beheaded to make the New Year feast. I was three or four."

(some spaces later..) 云朵的影子映在山丘上, 似水波般流动. 揉烂的天空棉花, 我正向你飞去..

donuts

nonsensical topic. since you said you were dropping by, i'll offer some donuts - gesture of hospitality.

i haven't been on MSN for some time. no urge to talk, exactly. just want to sort out my own mess. picked up a copy of Virginia Woolf's ' The Waves' yesterday. In fact I haven't read a single novel since summer but yesterday after class, i had this urge to touch them again. The 13th floor dedicated to good old novels isn't very popular for the general sicence orientated readers and when i was there, few people lingered around. It's almost impossible to navigate without the reference code ready at hand but anyway my trip was without purpose. Maybe i just missed the particular stale smell of ancient paper backs. To be embraced in calm serenity once more while outside late autumn rain trickled endlessly. It was soothing.

i bumped into virginia woolf and thought about what you said. There was a huge collection of her diaries. Now i think of it, I have no idea why I didn't borrow them. Maybe there're simply too many to choose from.

quotes of the day, from the introduction to 'the waves', written by Gilian Beer

While she was writing Mrs Dalloway Woolf copied a passage from Book VII of Wordsworth's The Prelude and added a comment:

The matter that detains us now may seem,
To many, neither dignified enough
Nor arduous, yet will not be scorned by them,
Who, looking inward, have observed the ties
That bind the perishable hours of life
Each to the other, & the curious props
By which the world of memory and thought
Exists & is sustained.

Good quotation for one of my books. - Virginia

Not like I understand it. Maybe I will one day.

Dropping by

Blogging industry is at a standstill, my own, I mean. And so is communication. Now and then saw you and a couple other friends online that I talked to often, and never seemed to have that urge to talk out these days. Busy life is so smothering. Clicked around and saw your revamped redro and attic rambles, whoa, loved those; that background picture of redro..and the perfect choices of pictures with words in rambles..beautiful.

Looking at the dates I realized there is almost a full month's lapse between your last entry and today. It's shocking, it's shocking, time zooms by so!!! The shock almost shook my sleepiness away...

Letter to Jude from Jady

Dear Jude,

Addicted to Jewel again, indeed. In little times like this, when doubts about self worth, truth and deception quietly awake and nibble away at the heart, I go to Jewel, Jewel the sensual yet innocent one, wise yet wild, still long before one day turning up posing sluttish on a neon colored album. (No, I still can't quite get over that.) if I sound as if I have been pensive and absorbed in thoughts for days, I wasn't—I had to axe away that pile of work little by little, everyday for a long while now, before it becomes a monster and squashes me. I threw myself out there to be consumed by those notes and texts, with a blank mind, little enthusiasm and a nasty sense of urgency. Not reading the eclectic way any more (just slowly reading a wonderfully written French novel, Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan..hope you are going on to take francais!) not writing, not meeting up with friends and acquaintances (I missed to meet tree, and feel most regretful…most inexcusable.) shutting myself off but again not so thoroughly—every night when I sign on online my sight would linger over a certain name for a while too long, wishing, not even subconsciously and knowing too well the improbability, that a message would pop up and clarify some things. I didn't know I'd care this much, about tucked-away truths, of a possibly purely impulsive phrase and an ultimately commonplace and trivial incident, and even if the moment has long expired; but then again, I can't say I don't know myself through and through—it was only that certain self-knowledge is harder to confront, so I did know I'd be caring this much. And the boy is blameless, for, what would anyone say or do after all that happened? (There's no need to contradict this because there are still stretches of the story omitted and untold...and probably should remain so.) And I keep my reticence. Long silences suck things far and away, like vacuum, intangible, boundless, and dreadful; that dread is excruciating in just that—for fear of saying the wrong things, one says nothing, and for fear of turning a small disaster into a crisis by trying to mend it, one ties oneself down and does nothing, and let silences fill out the endless stretch of hours; it's more like thin shelled snails than happily feathered and warm blooded chickens; and I don't know what to think about snails. Or about hiding, or being frail and guardless. (now strangely, Esther's face surfaces and sneers that Esther sneer, says, yeah, go wallow in self-pity!) (I say to her, but I don't pity myself, and she scorns in return.) (Bravo Es, hardly anyone I know of could take up that pitiless cynical insolent devil role as you could. So stay in my fantasy a while…) anyway, I was at Luo's place for a while today. What took place in that very room almost three weeks ago seemed at once dreamlike and immediately erase-and-rewindable. I imagined the boy walking into the room any moment, saying a nonchalant hi, and everything would be back on track. But that's too dramatic to be true, of course, and the real me would probably be a real bastard again, picking up my bag and running off in nameless rage and self-inflicted sadness again. And those aren't even important any more—as soon as the rush of emotions was past each would realize that there are too much at stake—independence, freedom, peace of mind, deep secrets, and happiness itself—to exchange for some uncertain, short-lived thing that vaguely resembles love. Was it out of loneliness? Was it out of boredom? And by just how much need I reduce human emotions to categories and abstractions and reason before I could finally deal with them? That question is going to stay with me for a while...I'll rest my fatigued fingers and mind here..and post this on ss, an arbitrary something that might as well be imagined, impersonal, fictional..

Jady.

not to be removed

no no no nothing, NOTHING, is ever gonna be removed, hear me? lol this isn't a published book, not even one to be published. this is a log that faithfully holds every little bits of conversations, however inconsequential they might seem..i'm now trying, again, to record thoughts, as many and frequently as possible, in the spirit of that Woolfian axiom--'nothing happened until you write it down.' oh yes. incidentally i'm reading Woolf now, not one of her fiction works--a volume of collected essays instead, and now i start to understand why she was upheld as a great great (possibly the greatest ever..this is by me though :P) literary critic by some of her brilliant contemporary men of letters, even greater than herself as a writer. (can't recall who and who said it, but they were big names..) read 'The Common Reader' I and II if you will..pure brilliance.

this pill, this melodrama

an ambiguous title which in simple terms, yells 'love psychedelico', YEAH!!

How funny. I can't see the blog but luckily I can still post. Ah, you know Gang got addicted to love psychedelico coz of 'standing bird'! One day she came to my room and asked whether I had any nice song to recommend. Then I randomly picked one and there it was 'standing bird'. Only a few words make sense to me but most often even those familiar sounds escape me. 'Ai ja sobani nai somewhat of a 'ride & role'. ' - This's the only complete line I know. If anyone would to ask 'what is love psychedelico'? It would be a headache question to answer. A blend of rock and metal which exude a laid-back attitude, almost a faded rhythm that reminds me vaguely of the 60s. Mixture of Japanese & English aside, Kumi's voice is just right for the flavour! I used to complain about Naoki's instrumental arrangement.(that guitarist, bass, keyboard and what not. so let's simply say he's the vocaless part) Lots of raging beats that lack sophistication and technique. But graudually even those became part of love psychedelico's essense. The first song that got me empty my wallet for the 1st LP album was 'everybody needs someone'. The effect of enclosed sound from the headphone prob enhanced the rhythmic shock. Kumi's voice is clean, not too sharp, not too mellow. And the detachment in the rage, I'm really glad I get to know them. Oh, 'standing bird' is prob the most representative song of LS.

Bonus: i love all their album/single cover designs.

LP Official Website

Profile [from the official web]



Formed in 1997 when they met in the college music club so called “circle” at Aoyama Gakuin University. Made their debut with “Lady Madonna / Yuutsu Naru Spider” on April 21st 2000. In the meantime, they created the original sound world, bringing a great fusion of 60’s/ 70’s rock taste and modern digital sound.With unforgettable guitar riff, their characteristic Japanese-English naturally blended lyrics and Kumi’s unconventional vocal style, they gave Japanese music scene a tremendous impact every time they brought their new works.The first album “THE GREATEST HITS”, second album “LOVE PSYCHEDELIC ORCHESTRA” and third album “LOVE PSYCHEDELICO III” have still been making a remarkable record as a long term hit seller.In November 2004, they went on their first time Asian solo tour.

KUMI【Vocal & Guitars】
Date of Birth＞1976.4.11　　　　　 Blood Type＞O
Born at＞Tokyo-prefecture　　　　Hobby＞Trip

NAOKI【Guitars, Bass Guitars & Keyboards】
Date of Birth＞1973.7.21　　　　　 Blood Type＞O
Born at＞Shizuoka-prefecture　　Hobby＞Painting

Single Covers





Album Covers










My fav LP song is 'days of days over you' ^^

Ida

Ida was born into a peasant’s family in a tarnished metropolis.

Not that the family still plows field for a living; there’s none in the tattered city. Ida’s grandfather, a moody carpenter, pushed his way into the city before his first child was born. He was later renowned for chasing after his own children in the streets with an axe, a cleaver, spitting, cursing, threatening death. But the children grew up fine, sturdy without and sentimental within, approaching life with weary practicality. It is the fiery grandfather that didn’t last. He died of uncured tuberculosis in the then poverty and ignorance, coughing bouts of blood in his last days like a phoenix before rebirth, barely fifty, still fiercely handsome, his oldest son a dreamy young man still.

Ida never gets to meet him, all this she knew from fragmentary accounts from the father, the aunt and the uncle, sometimes old neighbours too, and occasional reminiscences of her widowed grandmother, that illiterate, wrapped up woman. Ida wondered how much of her grandfather’s ignitable blood ran in her veins, for she was a grenade of a child, solemn and deathly still for hours when she wants to, and in tantrums kicks trees with a bleeding toe, and bangs her head on iron railings and brick walls. Her forehead now a jagged bony plane, and always a shade of dusty crimson from the red bricks. People say such strange child has demons born into the heart, for how else could there be such utter unspoken and unspeakable rage in such young heart? But Ida didn’t hear any of those. Those days she just attended to the chickens.

Ida’s grandmother raised a dozen chickens on one end of the long, narrow L-shaped balcony. It was the only thing she did and perhaps the only thing she could do. Her sons did the cookings, and her daughters-in-law the housework. Whenever she wanted to give a hand she was politely asked to not tire her old body. Grandmother was respected in the family for her seniority, but other than that Ida knew the adults found grandmother’s alternating illiterate mutterings and heavy silence depressing, a burden, an unsightly phantom existence.

Ida, on the other hand, savored the long chunks of silence, with the grandma, with her chickens, with the oozing well water of July, with caterpillar-infested wild bushes that tickled her shins and kissed green juicy smears on her flighty cotton skirt.

happy...

happy...

to jady,
you know,
maybe u remember today as something special
happy....
a hint

Jady:
special date? 27th february? i can only think of the following: day before my birthday (turning twenty, not happy), birthday of justina (my og mate who commited suicide, not happy), birthday of angela tan our exclassmate (neutral)...

oh my, what is it?

Added (21 Aug 05)
to Jady,
my 27th is your 28th, remember the time lag? So it was ur birthday hahaha.

great jady!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! check it out!

haha i really laughed my ass off, that short scribble you wrote on Mr. P Pervert that is. Yao huihui read it too and we recalled a great deal abt Pervis, but eventually came to the conclusion that those Londoners all look alike and we can't recall who's the one who loves the word 'rubbish' so much, with a spicy accent.

back to our original plan. free verse by which i mean, anything there exists in your imagination, poetry, broken sentences, ones you put down in a word document and found them all underlined in red, but all of these can't be more welcome in this slapstick free verse project.

i wrote a short paragraph some time ago and left it hanging, whether you wanna continue painting that imaginary character, delete, add, insert, whatever or start anew. at least let's get it moving.


A big yawn, seems to suck in all the air there is in this room, which becomes a vacuum as a result. Who knows the temperature of a thing called vacuum? Or have you ever heard of weather forecast on vacuum? The vacuum is snowing, raining, temperature drops to sub zero? Laugh away my friend.
But it’s freezing.
For my heart sits in its half cold labyrinth, deadly composed, listening to mutters. Then a strike of laughters that for once seem to break the crystal of thoughts, but no, they only shake the vacuum. Left, right, up, down. Riding the spasm which stops in no time.
You can sense shadows crowding, dark patches that flicker against the curtain painted golden by the lamp light. I don’t have to look to see. Doesn’t take much for a blind man to be wise. Whispers that are only a step away from excited gasps, mouths nipping on ears that are dangerously close, nervous glances exchanged that fail to hold a heart’s thousand secrets.
I’m the one looking on, a dangerous cat prowling with sensual strides, eyeing its prey from afar, ready to attack at any time. But the cat is not hungry. Kills for pride, kills for sinister discontentment. Kills to break the vacuum.
‘Hey, stoned again? Wanna play poker? We need one more to fill in.’
Prey is speaking. Low life. How pathetic and insignificant like a dust to be brushed off.
‘Why not. I’m bored’
Half lie, half truth.

indeed what happened

dear stick,
indeed what happened to our original plan. I wouldn't call it cowardly that I decide to quit the monumental project titled novel X right now. Partly due to the fact that I can't devote my time to extensive brainstorming and writing with absolute logic with few loopholes that are required of a successful detective novel. and It's neither wise to start out so big at first try. My suggestion is reserve the tarot muder and novel exchange as two separate projects for further development and meanwhile let's do some free verses as what originally planned. what do u think? I'm asking the same question here. I feel it's getting too big to be mangaged. Think smaller and have a realistic start seems to be more practical, at least for me coz I know i can keep it up and not dropping it any time I feel demoralized or brain blocked. waiting for your verdict and we'll see which path we choose. when we feel it's time to stop the free verse correspondence we'll be good enough n prepared to take on the two projects. let's title the free verse project slapstick for now and write whatever we want. alrite, less said and just vote.
we may even drop pieces of our thoughts into the free verse just to prepare for the 2 projects and see how it goes since there's no consequence attached.

Stick's vote

Of course I'd vote for that. That's what I (and you) wanted to do all along! Motion passed!



Haha, so now we do free verse. By ‘free verse' do you mean only poems like ‘A bird'? Or just any form like short stories? In any language? (We only know two anyway…plus what little French and Greek and Latin we could scramble together between us…hahaha) I am on for absolutely anything, anyway.



I am flipping through my old scrapbook, looking for tidbits of inspiration for a short story or something…and it strikes me how long since I last actually held a pen and wrote an entry. I am tempted to make just one, though probably inevitably silly, New Year's Resolution—keep a diary like VW did, who left 26 big volumes of diary after her, which she wrote with in mind the future pleasure of a 50 year-old VW slowly burning them in a fireplace, which she eventually didn't, and 50 a threshold she never lived to cross. WHY are we so obsessed with VW?! She's great, a true artist no doubt; still the obsession could be something worthy of several long notes of explanation from ourselves.



Ah, now I come across a hastily scribbled paragraph, standing all by itself. Ha! See if it's continuable!



Mr. P slowly articulated his arguments from between his teeth and his glassy blue eyes gazed down at me with a look of triumph. I was not sure I knew what was behind that look—“rebut me?' or “dare you to?” or “now nod and say yes”. Would have blurted out something were I in another place, but I was in Singapore, the Embarrassing Island, which possessed all the embarrassments of a former colony. Not wholly British; not Chinese, or Malay or Indian in that case; it's caught in the middle and can't make up its mind which way to go, therefore a ‘culture meltpot'. Meltpot my ass. I pulled myself back from raging thoughts and said, “Yes sir, I get your point.”



Hoho I guess that was written after some particularly frustrating conversation with Mr Purvis the Pervert, still remember him? Never mind what the argument was about, I don't remember it anyway. If you think it's possible to go on, go on anyway you like. First person or third, new characters, out of Singapore and into space, time travel, whatever. We are in a blindly-write-and-exchange game! And I think it best to first draw material from familiar experience for starting writers, and life in Singapore definitely falls in that range, ain't it? And if you think it's best to leave the rather 没头没尾的 paragraph alone, throw something else over!



And now I've come to the end of my grey scrapbook that lasted me from July 2002 to November 2003, and reread my own novel project that aborted after some dense three pages. Maybe I SHALL pick it up and bring it out of oblivion! My New Year's Resolution number 2!! With any luck, you'll get to read it ten years later.

Krall song of the moment--|Stop this World|

Stop this world, let me off

There's just too many pigs

in the same trough

There's too many buzzards

sitting on the fence

Stop this world

it's not making sense


Stop this show, hold the phone

Better days this girl has known

Better days so long ago

Hold the phone

won't you stop the show


Well,

it seems my little playhouse

has fallen down

I think my little ship has run aground

I feel like I'm in the wrong place

My state of mind is a disgrace


Won't you stop this game

deal me out

I know too well what it's all about

I know too well that it had to be

Stop this game well it's ruining me


Well I got too smart for my own good

I just don't do the things I know I should

There's bound to be some better way

I just got one thing more to say


And that is

Stop this game,

deal me out

I know too well what it's all about

I know too well that it had to be

Stop this game well it's wrecking me

Disillusioning comes slow and painful; in spite of the slowness, and because of the pain, it is irreversible. It's yet to be termed “disillusionment”, for it's yet to complete, the heart yet to release its clamping, compulsive-obsessive clasp on hopes, true or false alike. It's yet to rid itself of attachment and anticipation, yet to live true to a Buddhist lifestyle of having magnanimous love towards the world at large, and without attachment. The other day I came across this passage on friend's blog—

笑容立定可取，快乐下落不明

跟一个朋友一起去吃饭， 两个话痨凑在一起，一边吃一边说自然觉得很开心。
但是后来，他突然说，虽然此刻在笑，其实已经很久很久，没有感觉过那种发自内心的开心。他说着这些的时候，表情依然很淡然， 像在说着一件与己无关的事。

我们看欢乐总动员， 看八卦新闻，看六人行，看一切网上广泛流传的，脍炙人口的经典段子。我们那么乐观，随时随地，很容易就可以笑出声音。可是，当他问我最近有没有发自内心的开心过时，我笑着笑着停了下来，这问题太简单，但我却无法开口说出那答案。

我知道他说的那种发自内心的开心，那是一种从里到外的，无法言喻的欢喜，觉得诸事皆顺，万物皆顺眼，满心有无数的快乐要与人分享。那种感觉，曾经有过，至今依然记得。只是已经很久很久，没有体会过。

也许只有当一样你向往了很久很久的东西，终于被握在手中的时候，才会有那样深的幸福感。但是现在的我们，不再有耐心和勇气去等待和追求任何一样东西， 我们更喜欢那些垂手可得的快乐，虽然浅薄，然而立杆见影，是以也稍纵即逝。

过生日的时候许愿，闭上眼的瞬间，竟有一丝的慌乱，突然发现不知道自己要什么。只好马马虎虎的祈祷岁月静好，现世安稳罢了。一个连愿望都无法清晰的说出的人，又怎么会有愿望实现的时候那深切的欢喜？

与此相对的，是哭也变得比以前容易，甚至一句台词一段旋律都可以骗取我们的感伤和眼泪， 但是事后，也并没有多深切的悲伤。如果一样东西其实并未深入内心，不过是在脑海一闪而过，此间的得失，自然不会造成多么彻骨的痛苦。

我就这样变成了一个无所谓的人，同时丢失了那些鲜明的欢喜和哀伤。立等可取的眼泪和笑容更多的时候不过是一种发泄的途径，已经和我们秘而不宣的内心无关。

在轻浅的悲喜背后，是对生活淡淡的失望。
那些真正经历着快乐或悲伤的人，都是幸运的.

My first reaction was, How right this is. One moment later I felt confused, for when I thought about it I no longer was so sure that I'd agree, and didn't know how to categorize myself either—I live, or have been trying to live, a detached life, yet I constantly got myself into violent attacks of emotions, not infrequently invited them to me. Rapid switching back and forth between a peaceful/free of want state and an agitated, sensitive state helps only to push the schizophrenic tendency further, and hardly anything else. My tranquil self despises my actively seeking and feeling self for its attachment with the world, and the latter despises the former for its cowardice and escapism. In all good conscience I could just stick to one and be at peace with the universe and myself, but why oh why am I still not even remotely doing that?!

Jude, what do you think?!



评论/留言
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作者：Slappujudu　　时间：2004-12-4 6:14:30

it''s hard to say...
what''s the last time you felt so very happy?
unhappiness and discontentent are twins, at least for me. I always thought more things we know, more things we try to figure out on our own, the greater the discontentment that follows for not being able to truly understand material things, emotional status, and finally ourselves, whether we''re happy, whether what we''re doing is meaningful or whether the tea leaves are going to settle down at the bottom of the teacup at all. becoming detached and unfocused, small things easily fix my mind.it''s sometimes not even a matter of whether i choose to be one state or another, i let go of my feelings so easily that I don''t even bother to consciously pull myself out of it. and all of these for me, i know it''s the discontentment that comes with age. the feeling of not being in control puts me in hyper tension and to conquer my own discontentment i lose sight of happiness. but guess it depends on the simplicity of one''s mind and what it is he seeks in life. my grandma leads a simple life, haha gimme a break, i guess most grandmas do. if i ever see some granny one minute beseiged by the complexity of a philosophical problem n sinks into deep self inspection and the other minute all smiles n steady coz her secret wish come true i''d rather not be borne knowing this constant struggle of mind and mood swings are continueing into one''s late years. maybe i''m exaggerating and i bet there''re still some old grumpy souls out there. but the truth is, or i think it is, that all these frustrating split personalities are going to fade when i learn to let go, and that won''t happen any soon until i''m old n wrinkled as my grandma, and that''s an inevitable fact that''s programmed into my life. sometimes i think my definitions for my state of well-being is horribly strict. grandma smiles when we crowd around her, hugging n pinching her stomach. i laugh when told a joke, or when a friend''s words warms my heart. which one do u call happy? and who has the right to define transient happiness for everyone n why the need to cruelly separate them and draw boundaries, saying the cat with spots is not a true cat. I might have denied my own laughters but again, that''s probably coz i''m so discontented I start to doubt every existing particle, picking trivial wrongs out of ordinary happiness. but i am happy, even interspersed with fits of violence in life, coz they''re inevitable.
and don''t dispise your violent self coz that part of you is not wrong. neither be stringent with your tranquil self coz you are entitled to what''s rightfully yours. all i can say is, live easier and don''t escape. and maybe when you''re at the bottom of your own cage, will it comfort you that someone is thinking of you, hoping you well. it might sound cliche but why won''t that be happiness. r we not too strict on something as innocent as happiness. won''t it be overly painful to doubt every single line you heard or suspect nothing is what it seems. i''ll tell u a joke just to make you laugh and don''t roll it three times in your brain whether you laugh coz u r happy. you''re happy coz i wish you r happy, that''s why i''m telling the joke. simple.

有人用箭射大猩猩，一射，大猩猩用左手接住了， 二射，右手接住。 三射， 大猩猩用嘴接住了。三箭射完了，坏人已经没有箭了。可是最后，大猩猩还是死了， WHY WHY WHY

Depression, Jazz, Blues, and loving Diana Krall

The first time I heard Diana, I said to myself, this is how I've always wished my singing voice to be, low, throaty, has a warm, grainy texture to it, like those old pinewood floorboards in old-fashioned houses, brown with time, comfortably dry yet moist with fermented sentiments, faintly fragrant.

Now in another violent bout of depression I sit in my unlit room in the failing afternoon light, salty liquid half dried on cheeks, listening to Diana once more. That worn out heart trying to take those melancholic doses of warmth in, like how I would clasp my stone cold hands round a glass of steamy water in winter times, then slowly sip, drink, and feel the heat tickle every cell awake as it passes. The Heart is Lonely Hunter, by McCullers. I suddenly think of the novel I have yet to read. Only read another book by the same author long time ago, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, from which I copied the following quote—

"Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is the knowledge which makes him suffer. So there's only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best as he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world—a world intense and strange, complete in himself…the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons."

That's right. Go check out McCullers sometime. She wrote with a reticence and taciturnity that's most uncommon in writers.

And back to Krall. In her latest album she wrote six of the twelve songs, most of which are introspective, personal, and most intimate. And my personal favorite—

The Girl in the Other Room.

The girl in the other room
She knows by now
There's something in all of her fears
Now she wears it threadbare
She sits on the floor
The glass pressed tight to the wall
She hears murmurs low
The paper is peeling
Her eyes staring straight
at the ceiling

Maybe they're there
Maybe it's nothing at all
As she draws lipstick smears
on the wall

The girl in the other room
She powders her face
And stares hard
Into her reflection

The girl in the other room
She stifles a yawn
Adjusting the strap of her gown
She tosses her tresses
Her lover undresses
Turning the last lamp light down
What's that voice we're hearing?
We should be sleeping
Could that be someone who's weeping?

Maybe she's there
Maybe there's nothing to see
It's just a trace of what used to be

The girl in the other room
She darkens her lash
And blushes
She seems to look familiar

It is almost poetry. Or shall we say, it IS poetry, of its own kind, lyrical and wonderful, almost a film sequence, fragmentary frames, an oil painting, an afternoon reverie. A dimpling sea of mercury that mirrors an image of a ghostly self in me, immaterial, shivering with the joy of existence, and also angst of having in possession pining youth that's both a blessing and a curse. Am I the Girl in the Other Room? Or am I the one thinking about the Girl in the Other Room? Or both? Or neither? Only time knows. Which, again, is an illusion.


评论/留言
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作者：Slappujudu　　时间：2004-12-4 5:27:33
dear stick, your thoughts almost remind of of esther sama, but then probably no. her constant ''angst'' doesn''t contain melancholy. i actually listened to diana krall''s new album and was playing ''stop this world'' on repeat mode some period months back. and yes her voice is surely sensual and throaty. what i understand about beloved or the to love which paired together will be perfect but taken to be unidirectionally domineering, seems like a a selfish emotional outlet of what i''d say is excessive love that is eager to spread over and devour that ''house'' which quietly and patiently holds those tingling nerves until the emotional tides swell up from inside and eager to conquer another territory-the beloved. mind of a new lover that starts to live in your heart house and unaware it''s changing u in little aspects that amount to a new being recoganizable no longer. and you stare into the mirror grimacing and screaming at the new art work sculpted by a foreigner who comes from his own lonely planet n makes yours his home. dunno what i''m talking about. just suddenly feel that love is selfish. and lovers probably the sweetest enemies.

12月3日 占卜

十字法 问：情

1. 塔 U
2. 皇后 R
3. 魔术师 R
4. 死神 R
5. 星星 R
6. 正义 U
7. 皇帝 R
8. 祭司 R
9. 恋人 U
10. 倒吊男 U

理智，情感，谶。他人，自己。该相信谁。可以相信谁。

先读这个

title's self-explantory, as not to scare you with dazzling lenghty post that follows. i should be off to mug bio, chm, biochm. before i go, just add another bag of rubbish to our bin.

我在听
灌篮高手， 直到世界的尽头，
'我一个人独自徘徊，就好像空罐头， 被丢弃在街头。'
guess it's one of slapstick fav song that we would set to repeat mode. It's actually a sad love song about couples breaking up, leaving sad memories behind.

and the cat returns, i remember you said you liked her voice, so clean and sweet. it's not sung by the seiyu though.
and the lyrics,
我会独自一人仰望着这宁静的夜晚的星空，
直到天明仅存的这最后一颗星
不要过于悲伤
我把你的叹息化作春风
阳光照耀的山坡上，
我骑着自行车直上
车筐里满载的
是我们失去的回忆
lalala
低声吟唱
让春风环绕着我们
默默的祈祷着
与你再次相遇的幸福


sweet dreams!! back to my books.

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comments
作者：Stickyjady

我还真不知道《直到世界的尽头》的歌词是这样的啊~~“我一个人独自徘徊，就好像空罐头， 被丢弃在街头。”是开头樱木独自拍着篮球独行的背影那一段么？5555555555好想念..想念小学暑假天天起早床等候每天4集灌篮的日子，吃看奶粉或是蜂蜜或是冰棒，笑到在地上打滚（真的某一集我滚了好长时间...）我的寿寿阿！！！！
在听my heart will go on,突然很想再看一遍titanic..当年那么喜欢的帅气的leo，现在。。现在都成什么样子了嘛！！！！！！！！！！55555不过还是好喜欢...写marvin''s room review算了..没救的花痴...

the first lighting

my first time hearing this phrase 'the first lighting', for them it must be custom.

it's still a month away from christmas but all decorations are up, and today eight at night those trees at the square hundred metres away from our window were lighted up in all shades. their first lighting, first taste of holiday joy. reds, greens, even purples(don't argue with me gang jianan, it's not blue. stick you'll have to trust me.) gigantic and towering and 'delocalised all around', (sounds like?) and cuddled in the centre the open rind. i've been expecting crowds to be mass skating together while the neon lights shine on the ice and flash on the hundred of ice blades gliding past and it happens. and it's aboslutely christmasy and joyful. stick,did you watch this movie called 'love actually'? now i understand why xmas is the getting-together-and-make-up time for everyone. girls will curl up smiles and beam 'so romantic', guys will hold them and say 'you're so beautiful'(whether true or not), and we, fingerful of girls, stood there and mumbled 'so lengmatic'. we were simply beaten by the cold. i missed the fireworks though. i was walking outside against a current of people coming back in and i knew i missed the fireworks. so have to wait till real xmas to enjoy it.

the purple tree, the biggest one of them all- it's so tall! don't you want to be the little princess(female version), climb up there and pick the star. i had the urge to. you can virtually gaze, gaze, keep on gazing till your vision is a blob of watery purple and then you'll shake yourself back to conscious, realizing you're to be in quite a frightening number of unidentified photos totally unrelated to you, and people holding cameras suppressing a scowl and patiently waiting for you to walk away. just don't stone for too long.

steamboat, octopus balls, noodle soup, fried chicken wings, better be steamy, misty, hot, spicy! draw a gigantic mind bubble above my head and stuff all these in, and you might just see steamy vapour coming out of it. I WANT HOT FOOOOOOOOOOOOD! esp. on cold days like this.

so now i'm back here again typing.
finished typing.

this burden called time

stick, have you ever thought about your future, seriously?
btw, this site is strange. dunno how they configured english text,
isn't there automatic line configuaration instead of this long string of senteces with no breaks? i have to remind myself to enter sentence breaks manually, this's getting stupid
enter(strike of key)

i shouldn't dump any more depressing thoughts into this newly built very alive slapstick fun-devoting blog but the mood swings, well, they'll pass soon i guess, if not,i will manually 'bin' them by brutal force, like madly tearing out a crossed-out piece of rubbish paper from my notebook and start new again.i'm not questioning you really, coz i have bravely glanced at what my future's going to be like and premonition tells me it's not rosy looking. should i try the tarot telling link at the sidebar? anyway there's my roommate who claims to be a great tarot magician,
once she claimed i would have a what she called 'apocalypse' quarrel with my neighbour- btw, throw in some words for my neighbour, name Didem, parents turkish, spent her childhood
(8 years) in the northern part of Japan, speaks perfect non-yankee-accented Japanese, whose half social cycle is japanese, who works part-time in a great Jap restaurant, who is small built, dirty brown curly hair, lovely looking. and how did we come to notice she actually speaks Jap- a 'random fact' is what she calls her japanese speaking. well, one day we heard some familiar but strange sounds, for eg. gumbade, benkio(study), sabishi(lonely), someone speaking outside our room. we peeped, not asian. blurry, was it our neighbour?? so we pretended to go outside and dump our luggage to take a closer look, and we were shocked at our new
discovery, that our foreign looking neighbour speaks perfect japanese. that's more than enough words to dscribe Didem, excessive.

where am i, so my bad mood and my gloomy perspective about my own future, sometimes when i look at those websites where people claim how glad , how grateful, how excited(string of adjectives) that they are following their dreams and doing what they enjoy every single secondand minute. that it's their dream come true. where is mine? what am i doing here? do i want to be a mad scientist? (i've come to the conclusion that what it takes to be a great scientist-madness), no and no and no. sometimes i even fear it. stick why can't you go on and be an independent novelist or script writer, and i , maybe, try my luck in graphics.

and i only live one life. time's a burden.
enter, key, tap!

that's just part of my daydreaming. maybe i can only find contentment when i do put in enough efforts, which aren't there obviously or else i'll be happier. those success stories,
how i wanna snigger sometimes. and listening to 胡彦斌的‘我的未来不是梦，我在认真的过每一分钟' he sounds so happy n convincing. wish i can steal part of it n carry it around with me. forget about the depressing talks, the crux of the problem, the more i look at it, is, i'm lazy. i just wanna be entertained. i don't want to be responsible for my future,and for my 'precious' (precious being those closely related to me)that's a sign of not really growing up i guess. fabrics so thin it breaks so easy. well, stick, wat r u thinking.share a piece with me. (sounds like pizza,or should i say
'lemme have a bite', in my case one bite=one whole piece)i must make it to the finals(i mean the exams). that's the target for now, dun care how morbid it sounds.

and we once said we're gonna meet somewhere in the States right?tell u, if i don't work anyharder, i won't make it there.

mmm, ok, feeling better, dump your black biles in if you wanna shout.
black bile= melancholy, melan=black, bile=choly
that's abt one of the positive things of learning word dissection,
but it irritates pple prof says we're losing friends

songs now on my playlist
我的未来不是梦
超时空爱情
do as infinity-yesterday n today
haru no kaze-the cat returns theme song
norah jones-shoot the moon

slapstick years

we define year 2002-2003 as slapstick years

Timeline

in slapstick years, we were in raffles j-walker college. we had potato head as our civis tutor and a bunch of nerds and jerks as our classmates who will be singapore's future life saviours. these future docs include, our bio rep jasper who finished every lab faster than any other (why? we let the reader figure out) n once bought a bag of potatoes for a bio expt.

dickson chau who acted cool and for a specific period in slapstick year, pretended to be eminem chau. and who still owed jude some considerable bucks ( how much? forgot)

yee yucai whom jady particularly despised, who was aka oily yee, who likes to sing oldie chinese songs only JJ's parents know of

dehan and kianleong, ruggers r gonna rock the medical world!

raffles player lady madonnas, xingning and amanda, why they suddenly want to be doctors are the second biggest mystery after the UFO or the egyptian pyramid.

i shouldn't be mean but i wish they grow to be good docs.why won't xingning be actress and amanda be singer. maybe we're all dreamers.

esther sama, good luck there! full support.

xinhui, it must b family tradition. debate lady going med(mad).



early orientation phase
jady had a crush on wu.
jady stayed all night for orientation night just to see wu again.
jady shut us up whenever we wu-ed.
NB: jude hadn't found any crush yet.


we had leong *** has our chem tutor. he later went on further pursuit of chem Ph.D in NUS. he's actually nice but he's constantly mad at our poor performance. once he set a quiz and one question reads 'state your tutor's full name _______' later we had ms tang linlin, who beamed wide smiles at leong ** when she was still in apprenticeship (or is it jude's illusion, or maybe it's just her mouth'), who also set a quize and one question reads ' state the lady's name in the photocopying shop ______'. Jianyang put 'madame 复印'.

we had the most lethal weapon in RJ as our maths tutor- Mrs Kwan, an iron lady who can be summarised as follows, 'volunteers to the board', 'radio off', 'tutorials out', big build, steely eyes, still, our favourite, esp. Jady's

potato head had always been around, say no more ' let's take a 5min break', i love her home-made jellies, and malaysia produced cookies. once she bought a bowl of colourful jellies to the class, red/green/yellow/blue/green(did jady pick green?), after everything was emptied into our bowels, wat was left in the container was BLACK fluid, guys in our class said 'yaks'

who taught us physics, xiaocui's heartthrob, geez, stick, i can't even remember his name. his lessons soporific, his words monotonous, his face too blurry. 'his eyes so 温柔像大黄狗'- last comment by xiaocui. later we had that chubby 李达良, who went from RV-Hwa Chong-London Univ-RJ. who looked smart, whom the locals joked about, spreading rumours that we liked him. who was track and field's teacher in charge- a too sensitive fact luo chan just can't get over.

in the middle of slapstick yearI.
Jady was in charge of library catalogue?.
Jude was slave of P&P, working under esther sama.

end of slapstick yearI,
Jady was in chem O training.
Jude was in bio O, coz she was kicked out from chem O.
Jady later got a silver, Jude got a merit. everyone happy and crappy as ever.


Slapstick Year II
J&J lived in 懒人之家. starting a great year
Wu hao was our neighbour, she called us 南蛮子。
Gang was our next next door neighbour. we went for dinners together.


Tang linlin was now in full charge of SO3K.
She was great at recognizing faces- 'yuxuan, could you answer this question please' Tang beamed megawatts smile at poor gang jiana, who, despite enormous humiliation, answered the question in obedience. While listening to 'yuxuan's answers, Tang was writing on the borad and after 'yuxuan' was done, Tang turned around, smiled and said 'thank you!', to jady.(this's the version i heard, stick,
if it's wrong , correct me all you wish) but this much is true. Tang came into class, excited, announcing 'class, don't you think jianan, yingyue, cuiwei they look alike?'



Jady's b-day-Feb
we had a hamster pet called 朵朵 who looked like a hyperactive cockroach (except the colour) hamster later died, hopefully peacefully.

Jude's b-day-April
Jady n esther plotted a scheme unbenoticed, Jude was given 8 tropical fishes, colourful. died very soonish due to horrible lack of care n experience


to be continued...