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| Magic. Some people believe it exists, the more skeptical find it only a component of fairy tales that at most can charm puerile children with no knowledge and no logic whatever. I myself do not believe in magic. But sometimes I have this stirring feeling in my soul or in my heart. Like when my God talks to me, when I hear Him, when I can sense His presence. That feeling is the awesome type, the overwhelming rush that overpowers all other senses. Yet there's another feeling, more soft, more gentle, like a feather that brushes against my skin. It develops into a strange but almost natural sensation. That specific feeling, almost surreal feeling can come anytime, any where. When I gaze out of the window at the magnificence of the heavens or when I stand upon a sandy bay and watch the waves roll back and forth, engulfing the shore and spitting it out. Or even in the most mundane daily activities, when I walk home alone from school and a brilliant sunset blazes above in the near distance. Or when I play with cats, stroking their heads and tickling their chins and throats. That feeling is VERY difficult to describe. It's a complex mixture of deep longing, or refreshment, of peace. Somehow, I feel that it's God's way of helping me to appreciate the things around me. Like a painting, but instead, it comes alive.
Tonight I had that feeling. Dinner was with my family and some friends from Indonesia. Arab street, beautiful quaint shophouses with intricate carvings and in the backdrop buildings towering. A mosque with its golden dome, and a hundred and one eateries that line the streets. This place, I cannot recollect its name, all I know that it is an Arab restaurant run by a retired Egyptian professor. The unique quality of the restaurant is that they let you experience as close as possible what it was like to eat in Arab. So when most of the shops had closed along that row and the opposite, carpets would be set out on request on the tiled pavement and dinner would be held there on the carpet itself with cars whizzing past you and carpet shops galore. Tonight was not the first time I had eaten there. But it was the first time I really experienced it. Usually, we would sit at tables, the uninteresting alternative. But tonight, for the first time, we sat on the carpets, under the aged domes linking the shophouses. Maybe it was the whole atmosphere of the watersmoking thingys or eating with my fingers instead of cold cutlery but I felt that queer but pleasant sensation again. The food was amazing. With Lamb shanks and meaty kebabs and this very tender chicken with the most creamy humus. Very good. And the rice, the fragrance and the taste of the slight tangy sweetness of the sauce and the raisins. The saltiness and the slight honeyed taste of the chicken. The hint of spiciness in the beautiful lamb which came served on heaps of yellow rice. Even though I winced with each bite (cos of my braces), I ignored most of the pain. The food was more than worth it. Anyway, eating with hands is a pretty oily and messy affair. The oil and grain of rice get stuck to the palm or the lower part of your fingers if you're not careful and bits of spices get stuck..So anyway, after the meal I had to go wash my hand of the grease and because I had tried to lick up all remnants of the glorious food. But anyway, the toilet sink was occupied and the kitchen sink had a very flustered looking man scrubbing away so I decided to walk out the back and just look around. What I saw look less of Singapore and more the deserted alleys of some exotic foreign land. The street lamps glowed dimly shedding an orange warm light that barely illuminated the dark nooks and creeks of the alley way. People smoked the sheesh something and sat on carpets. The road was quiet, hardly a car in the streets and waitresses and waiters of the Arabian restaurant shuffled to and from a room opposite the street. That felt magical. | | |
| Enough of the morose. I can feel a change. Some change at least. It's subtle but I can feel it when I first breathe in the morning and in the last breath before I sleep. Something Has Changed. But I cannot tell what. It's like the first raindrop that lands on your skin. You can only feel the slight impact, but it does not alter your course or your current occupation.
It's not that life has gotten easier. I must admit that, in fact, it has only become more packed and more intense. I guess that maybe, in some way, I've experiened a growth, or like, a difference in attitude towards difficulties. I find it almost humorous in a melancholic way that I think my life is difficult, that I can label a teeny failure in my life as a "difficulty" when somewhere around the world, someone is facing a life-and-death situation. And I can sit in my chair and type this out. Anyway, about my change. It's enabled me to look at things differently. To somehow, take something and look at it in a 3D format instead of my selfish 2D format. And somehow, that's affected Everything. It may seem like I'm contradicting myself. But like a raindrop can launch into a full-fledged storm, so this change may be the catalyst for something else. I don't know.
Sometimes I don't feel like I belong to this world. It might sound poseur. But I dream. And my dreams are always so real that when I wake up, I have this longing to return to that world. Impossible though it might seem. And my worlds translate into words, or songs. I feel dead sometimes. Or I feel old. I feel that I've lived centuries. Or I will feel invisible, or looking through a seeing glass, like a passerby looking through an exhibit, or an audience watching a play. Really, like an outsider. I feel this world of mine sometimes, when I lie on my bed in darkness and stare out at the bright street lights outside my window, or I feel the brush of my hamster's fur against my cheek, and it tickles. The sunlight streaming through my window on a lazy afternoon, falling on my hair and my face, partially blinding me. Or when I look at pictures of myself. I cannot, no matter how hard I try, feel a connection between me 10 years ago, 5 years ago or even a week ago. I know it's me. And that I am staring at a reflection of me in the past but unless I can recollect and muster up the feelings of that particular time when the photograph was taken, I can feel nothing. I love to be on stage. Because somehow, every component that makes me can come alive and unhindered. Sometimes, I feel like I'm constantly acting. Constantly putting on a mask. Maybe, and most probably, it's not only me who feels that way, but if that's the truth, isn't that a bit sad? That we are only our truest when we finally close our eyes. Perhaps that's why I feel like this world's outsider. Because I cannot relate when I myself am lying most of the time.
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| You know how it's like to fall down? To hit the ground with a thud and choke on dust as you feel the dull sensation of pain slowly crawl to your clouded senses as you lay there. Of course you immediately stand up and regain your composure, brushing yourself off and shrugging the slight pain off before inspecting your scrapes and scratches.
That's the norm. Fall and rise up again. Move on.
Resilience they call it. But imagine falling again and again. Each recovery taking longer and longer until you finally just lie there, feeling instead of pain, the dull throb of fatigue, pounding your joints and bones. The countless scrapes and scratches never having a proper chance to heal, instead fester as you just lie there. Dust and dirt swirl up in the impact, choking you but you no longer have the will to lift your head just a little higher. Endlessness. Only one thought manages to grind through, with each throb appearing: the thought of falling again once you've stood up. Undergoing the slow, painful procedure of crawling up again just to fall. Just to scrape and scratch. You know there's always a chance that your feet will remain firm and you just might not lost your balance. But you laugh at that hope cruelly as you just lie there. Hopelessness. Spurred on by experience.
And you just lie there. | | |
| aaaaaaaahhhhh.. mental block. Let's see. I really have absolutely NO idea except that I should be studying. HAH. so there you go. Studying. Pheeeeeesh.
No idea. Really, I have no idea what happened to the love of school. Is it me? Is it the system? Is it a mixture of both? Anyhow, the results are a constant dread of failure and a constant pessimism at the coming of the ending of hols. Anticipation. The want for a challenge. The yearning to learn something new. That's sort of faded into the background. I am not saying that I don't ever learn anything new in school. Of course I do and of course I cherish the knowledge, but the emphasis is entirely something else, no matter what the vision or the motto is.
Or maybe I'm just having sour grapes because of my sucky results for last term. But anyhow, my resilience level is nearing a 0. A big fat 0. Yet, when I reflect, even when my papers were showing less red marks, I sort of wondered what I'm putting myself through for. A 9 to 5 job that I get rutted in and stuck for the next half of my life? Another nice piece of paper which I add to my resume which hopefully can get me other slips of papers which eventually pile up in a dusty folder or end up laminated and framed on a wall? Ah well, maybe in another 50 years time, when I'm retiring from that 9 to 5 job, I'll see something new in those papers. Maybe.
As for now, I cope with my friends and my interests and myself. I just cope.
We need a revolution.
Wait for the sign. | | |
| ***You Are 70% Boyish and 30% Girlish***
You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch.
Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes.
You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them.
You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.
How Boyish or Girlish Are You?
http://www.blogthings.com/howboyishorgirlishareyouquiz/
heh. i find it funny:D | | |
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