Thursday, September 28, 2006
In celebration of the human spirit
May I present to you, 2 beautiful poems I've came across these few days.They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed;
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
They're beautiful not because the words are pretty. They're beautiful because they rarely come by. And amidst the dark world we live in today, and always have, the contrast simply accentuates the inner spark it brings. For William Blake once said, "Without contrast, they'd be no progression."
Indeed, true 'progression' of humans at its best.
posted@11:44 PM
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The days grew hot, O Babylon!
People talk of the ‘tragedy’ in my (plays), and call it ‘sordid,’ ‘depressing,’ ‘pessimistic’—the words usually applied to anything of a tragic nature. But ‘tragedy’ I think has the meaning the Greeks gave it. To them, it brought exaltation, an urge towards life and ever more life. It roused them to deeper spiritual understandings and released them from the petty greeds of everyday existence. When they saw tragedy on the stage they felt their own hopeless hopes ennobled in art.”
They are hopeless hopes, “because any victory we may win is never the one we dreamed of winning. The point is that life in itself is nothing. It is the dream that keeps us fighting, willing—living! Achievement, in the narrow sense of possession, is a stale finale. The dreams that can be completely realized are not worth dreaming. The higher the dream, the more impossible it is to realize fully. But you would not say, since this is true, that we would dream only of the easily attained. A man wills his own defeat when he pursues the unattainable. But his struggle is his success! He is an example of the spiritual significance which life attains when it aims high enough, when the individual fights all the hostile forces within and without himself to achieve a future of nobler values.
Such a figure is necessarily tragic. But to me he is not depressing; he is exhilarating! He may be a failure in our materialistic sense. His treasures are in other kingdoms. Yet isn’t he the most inspiring of all successes?
This extract totally took my breath away.
posted@8:47 PM
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Damn imabalanced.
A pitiful and wretched thing
Is life, that swiftly passes by.
Death's angel o'er us spreads his wing
And through the world resounds his cry:
"All must perish, all is vain!"
All that upon this earth draws breath
To earth must fall beneath his doom,
Sorrow alone escapes our death,
to carve upon the gaping tomb:
"All must perish, all is vain!"
FUCK FUCK FUCK!!! STRINDBERG AND O'NEILL ARE UNPARALLELLED!!!
posted@3:21 PM
Saturday, September 23, 2006
In veno veritas
I'm such a geek - My post-prelims days are spent reading plays and novels non-stop. So far, I've finished 2 Ibsen plays, 2 Beckett Plays, 4 Harold Pinter Plays, re-read Long Day's Journey into Night, gave up on Hornby's Long Way Down because it's getting damned boring (but the Virginia Woolf joke was just classic) and finally, in the midst of finishing Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.As you can see, I'm practically ransacking Edmund Tyrone's bookshelf, but please don't take it as one of the unnatural symptoms of a mugger. Rather, I find myself when I read those decadent plays that's not only tinged but infected and plagued by pessimism, malaise and infinite sorrow of modern man; that's just like you and me. Plus it gives me orgasms.
Naturalists touch on topics I so enjoy, in particular Ibsen's obsession with 'truth in marriages' and man's over-idealized notion of romance and love. When I read his plays, I just go,
"YEAH MAN FUCKER YOU GOT IT ALL PINNED DOWN TO A T!"
And when I get high on music, I shout out to my maid,
"IT IS THE HOUR TO BE DRUNKEN SITI! BE DRUKEN, IF YOU WOULD NOT BE MARTYRED SLAVES OF TIME; BE DRUNKEN CONTINUALLY! WITH WINE, WITH POETRY, OR WITH VIRTUE, AS YOU WILL!!!!'
And make her reply (with vehemence),
"IN VENO VERITAS!!!!"
YEAH, TRUTH WE FIND IN WINE!
Anyhow, I was listening to U2'S 'Walk On' and its amazing how, through all these years, the intro riff still pierces my heart as it did the first time I heard it. And it makes me wonder, if the song pierces me (no phallic implications) because it softens me, or because I just let down my guard and you know, kinda like embrace the whole shit. And I can't help but remember this very nice but cliched line that goes,
"Artists paint on canvas; musicians on silence."
Woah, quite apt right.
posted@2:32 PM
Friday, September 22, 2006
Where have they all gone?
I feel so lonely at times.Was having my lunch yesterday alone, and treading through the innate barren lands of cynicism. And I questioned myself, why can't just eat as much as I want and not think about getting fat. Like why can't I just bloody enjoy the moment.
It's just like, why can't I just forget the pessimism and just enjoy the moment; embrace love, and fill the void that's been present ever since. These days I find it hard to carve out an identity for myself; something I can stand back and examine. But how can I, when I don't even understand myself, nor know what's driving all these vehement thoughts and actions. I still stick firmly to my life philosophy that there is no greater force harder to control or expect then from ourselves - that is, our own actions. We determine our own fate, and paint our lives chapters by chapters as our decisions guide them.
But how do you paint, or draw, or write, when you don't even know what are the words coming out, or how the picture will be turning out to be?
Experience sucks, and once you've sunken into this cesspool you just can't throw in the towel and say, 'That's it'. Because the problem is that there is seemingly no end to this manure you've stepped on. The bitter taste of life sucks because once you've tasted it, you can never forget it. Because life, as Schopenhauer puts so well in his essay, 'On the Suffering of the World', gets painful because we always remember the bad experiences, and let the good ones pass by.
Do I still remember the first time I got myself a scholarship; walked up the stage, shook the Prime Minister's hands and took my prize money? No.
Do I still remember the sweet taste of victory when I got through my Heats during Nationals? Yes, but only because I've gone through so much suffering and pain to get to that stage, and that's why it's memorable.
Joy is passive, but pain isn't. It jerks your soul like a fucking flicking cork, and before you know it, your heart bleeds and you cannot do anything else but stand at the bottom, and hold it all on your shoulders. Because you know nobody's there to care, nor help you heal. Nobody at all, but yourself.
I'm having a terrible existential dilemma, because I don't know what constitute me, and myself. I'm so terribly frightened at the thought of me, as I know of, being driven by my unconscious. And does anyone have any idea how scary it is, to know that a large part of your 'rational decision making process' isn't that rational nor controlled afterall? And before you can resolve this crisis, strata and strata of shit just piles on top of your head.
With such an intricately woven web of life, how can one truly enjoy a moment? Till I learn how to crawl my way out of this, I will always be the person I never think I am.
posted@11:59 AM
Sunday, September 17, 2006
And you will know my name is the Lee when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
Not a-fucking-gain. THE FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW IS MY FUCKING FAVOURITE MAGAZINE ZOMGZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. PAP's gonna sue them till they tng sar tng kor for sure. How to dao cheong with PAP?!?!?! Argh... I'm so fucking pissed now. Damnit.
Published: September 14, 2006
SINGAPORE Singapore's prime minister and his father, who founded the modern city-state and holds a Cabinet position, have filed a defamation suit against the publisher and editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Citing court documents, Dow Jones Newswires reported Thursday that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Lee Kuan Yew, filed the suit on Aug. 22 against Hong Kong-based Review Publishing Company Ltd. and FEER editor Hugo Restall. FEER is owned by Dow Jones & Co. Inc.
The lawsuit centers on an article published in July about Chee Soon Juan, an opposition politician in Singapore.
Restall wrote about Chee's campaign for more democratic freedoms in the tightly controlled city-state and how the ruling People's Action Party has sued a number of opposition politicians. The article also criticized the government's handling of a corruption scandal at a charity, the National Kidney Foundation.
Chee, an outspoken critic of Singapore's government, was bankrupted in February and barred from standing in elections after failing to pay former prime ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong some 500,000 Singapore dollars in libel damages for comments he made during the 2001 elections. In March, he was jailed for eight days for questioning the independence of Singapore's judiciary.
FEER's publisher and Restall have until Sept. 25 to appear at Singapore's High Court to respond to the suit, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
A FEER spokesman declined to comment.
Before filing the suit, the Lees sent a letter to Review Publishing demanding that it remove the interview from the magazine's Web site, issue an apology and pay compensation.
Review Publishing proposed publishing the Lees' letter on its Web site and asked for an interview with Lee Kuan Yew, who ran the city-state from 1965, after it separated from a short-lived federation with Malaysia, to 1990. His son took over in 2004 from Goh, though the elder Lee retains the Cabinet title of Minister Mentor.
Ruling party leaders have successfully sued several opposition politicians and journalists for defamation over the years. They say they sue to protect their reputations.
Domestic and international critics, including the U.S. State Department and London-based rights group Amnesty International, have accused Singapore's rulers of using defamation lawsuits to stifle opponents.
posted@1:00 PM
Sunday, September 10, 2006
I know who you are but what am I?
These days I have no idea what I want anymore. I used to pride myself at being one of the few who just can't seem to get stressed, but I guess reality has not only caught up with me, but has also bitten quite a bit off me.First and foremost, I have no idea why despite starting so early for my Prelims, I still find myself NOT EVEN FINISHING HALF OF HISTORY, like seriously omgwtfbbq. Nevermind about that, I'm kinda resigned to the fact and can only console myself by saying that I shan't "peak now". Later, yeah yeah whatever.
The thing that perturbs me of recent is my aggressive hold on my status; one that's single, carefree, and free of commitments and restrictions which a relationship could otherwise impose on me. Everytime I stray a little away from this comfort zone, I feel the strong desire to return to my territory, far away from this grey area we commonly call "love".
I was wrong, so wrong. I thought I could be happy with someone as long as I thought she suited me, suited my expectations of an ideal companion. But I was all so wrong. And this is the part that particularly annoys me, because if finding someone whom you think is good for you isn't gonna work out, then we'd have to relegate the decision to that of feelings, of instincts and the like - Things that have gone all wrong in the past, for me at least. Rationality and passion are just such distinctively divided areas in my shoes. It's just so fucking hard to find a common compromising area that I can safely "invest" my feelings in. I say "invest" because after 3 failed relationships, I'm really pretty much drained, tired and most importantly, cynical about this whole damned thing.
I feel so damned guilty now because sometimes my feelings give way, and I make the wrong steps, leading you on and on and on and fuck it; I'm too much of a coward to take risks with someone I care too much for. As of now, my stand's very very clear - I want to remain single. And in case the world thinks I'm joking, I'm not. Even if you find me in a relationship, that'll probably be a fling, yes a fling.
You're not a fling, and that's why we're not in a relationship. Understand?
posted@12:00 AM
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Wah.
The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.
So sappy but also so beautiful. One of my favourite quotes since 4 years ago.
posted@11:17 AM
