BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Thursday, October 15, 2009

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Genusfrog [ 12:16 pm ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
THE DISPOSABLE BOYFRIEND

I once knew a girl who had a boyfriend. and we were all uni students together. and i remember her planning for an overseas postgraduate course without her boyfriend in mind. in her plans, she would get up one morning, fly to another country, live there for two years and then see if things work out.

i've been disturbed by that ever since. is it really normal to start relationships and then plan your life without those relationships in mind? maybe that's the wrong question. maybe the right question is how much should you plan your life around the relationships you start? changing a job, buying a car, putting money down... maybe. migrating to another country? maybe?

really? people really do things like that?

apparently they do.

in a world where identity is forged more between nine and five than in any other hour, it is boyfriends and girlfriends that become disposable. if he doesn't fit into the plan, he wasn't meant for me. if she's fated to be with me, she'll get up one morning, fly to another country and live there for two years. with me.

i'm sad today for all the boyfriends and girlfriends out there whose partners are already planning an overseas life without them. i wonder how they're gonna find out.

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Genusfrog [ 1:22 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
ON MAGAZINES AND MEMORY

If memories could be canned, I hope this one will never expire. If an expiry date must be added onto it, let it be "10,000 years".
- Cop 223, Chungking Express

You know what makes me feel sad? a stack of magazines sitting by the door, waiting to be thrown out.

so much writing gets put into those magazines and so quickly they get chucked out. how long do you keep your magazines for? six months? a year? depends on the magazine, right? exactly my point.

it saddens me when a lot of work gets put into a publication that expires, in what might just as well be, overnight. if i were to write, i would like to write things that last a long time. i'd like to write something that can be read years from its publication date and still be entirely readable. i decided a long time ago that this blog would be about ideas and not events, because i could never read my archives if i blogged about what happened everyday. and i'd never want an archive that i couldn't bare to read.

it saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting. like magazines. or newspapers. never to be referenced again. yes. stacks of magazines waiting to be recycled sadden me. but bookshelves make me happy.

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Genusfrog [ 4:57 pm ] | 2 comments

Monday, November 19, 2007
ON MELANCHOLY

The collins dictionary let me down today. i don't like it's definition of melancholy. the collins advanced learner's defines melancholy as "an intense sadness". i disagree.

the relationship between melancholy and sadness cannot be one of degrees. if anything, a very intense sadness could possibly be mistaken for depression, but certainly not melancholy.

melancholy, as i've always known it, is a detached variety of sadness. it is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. it's a sadness that stands outside of itself and feels the quiet pang of loss rather than the raw pain of it.

i'd almost go as far as to say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself. it's like looking back on an unfortunate event from a place that doesn't feel the firsthand sadness - the sadness is now secondhand, no longer played out on ground zero but watched from the rooftop, looking down. it moves from being a sadness for to being a sadness about. yes, i think this is melancholy. collins = fallible.

i've been feeling a bit melancholy lately. i don't mind it. it's actually quite nice.

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Genusfrog [ 5:45 pm ] | 5 comments

Tuesday, November 13, 2007
MAYBE THERE IS ANOTHER WAY

"While sending you home last night, I got lost in the city. I drove for hours in the swell of roads that seemed to rearrange themselves whenever I wasn't looking. You were asleep. I drove in concentric circles in to the heart of this strange and despairing place. Eventually I found my way to your house. All you had left for me was a kiss and goodnight. And as I watched you disappear behind the doors, I thought about you and the bizarre city. And I thought, for what? For what, do I crawl my way out of this asphalt labyrinth? Just so I can part with you? Just so I can part... with you? For that alone, I consider it cruelty." - Fabrizio Bazzani, The city I love

Bazzani is right. why do we sometimes fight so hard just so that we can do something we've always dreaded doing?

is it because of duty? is it obligation? duty to whom? and what obligated it so? i've found that in life, maybe we do too many things that we'd rather not do, believing on the outside that there's no other way, but secretly knowing that there is.

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Genusfrog [ 8:01 am ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, November 06, 2007
ON PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORY: ERASURE

When you break up, do you throw away all your photographs together?

i have. all it took was dragging one folder into the bin and emptying it. and almost magically, it's as if you can forget the past. it's not that you can't. it's just that it's absurd.

throwing away old photographs is like denying a portion of your life. it's like saying that for x number of months, somewhere in some now indistinct past, you didn't exist. you don't talk about it anymore, you don't have documents to show for it anymore and you certainly don't have pictorial memories of it anymore. while at its best, it looks like a disciplined operation to move on and not dwell in the past, at its worst, it's a disciplined operation to pretend that you never did live.

i don't know what to do with my past now that i've thrown away all my photographs. i understand why i've trashed some memories - however good they were - but i also now understand why it's sad that some pasts have no place in a life that must move forward.

i also don't know what to do with the gaping hole in my personal history books now that i've censored my own existence. new memories will be formed, will propel me forward and will keep on shaping me. but new memories should not replace old memories. they should sit chronologically in front and sentimentally on top, but our hearts are not hard drives. you can't overwrite one cluster with new knowledge.

but maybe throwing away these photos is the only thing that can help you take new ones. maybe the only way into a meaningful and reconciled future is the denying of your once-meaningful but irreconcilable past.

photos, then, merely act as a substitute. a symbol of not just a person but of mondays and sundays and streets and parks. and burning them is like burning away an old house so that you can build from the earth again.

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Genusfrog [ 7:00 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, November 02, 2007
ON PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORY: YEARBOOK

Do you remember your yearbook photos from school? i remember all of mine, from form one to form four. i've got them all in an album. you can see how we grew up. i remember also the day we took our form five class photos. i remember where i stood. what the day was like.

i don't think i missed a normal schooling day in form five. at least not until a day when i had a fever. went to school the next day and they told me the photographer came back yesterday. something happened to his film so he came by to reshoot my class photo. just like that. no announcement, no forewarning. i was out of my final year's yearbook and it was over a silly fever.

i never claimed my copy of that yearbook. i remember wanting to dissociate myself from it, knowing fully well that i wasn't represented there. so today, i have no form five yearbook. i don't regret not owning it. it would hurt a lot more to have it lying around knowing that i remember everything about the photography day and still not ending up in the pictures.

i wonder, when my school friends grow old and look at that yearbook, will they remember all the faces in the class? chances are, they won't. being photographed is no guarantee of being memorable. but not being photographed doesn't make things better. an unmemorable but photographed face can still conjure an imagination of who a person was, regardless of how unfaithful that imagination may be. but an unphotographed person, no matter how memorable, has no place in the pages of some of life's inane histories. his place is in the hazy recollections of forgetful people. and while photographs never fade, memory does.

when i woke up this morning, i remembered my form five yearbook. and i feel sad for all the boys like me, who also didn't show up on that random day when the photographer came back. i'm sure some of them don't care about such memories.

somehow, that seems to sadden me even more.

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Genusfrog [ 9:45 am ] | 2 comments

Monday, October 01, 2007
RAINY DAYS

It's been blustery. it drizzles most of the time and rains when it doesn't. the sky is an indecipherable grey. like candy floss that forgot how to be candy.

on the road, there are puddles and the grass is sloshy. from my desk, i can see a distant hill, and it's a grey-green. i wonder, if i painted that hill, what colours would i mix to get that colour? it's so drab. almost as drab as the sky. and everywhere, over everything, there seems to hang this cloak of melancholy. a rainy day laziness that makes you think about life and the past.

i remember a comparable evening in melbourne. i drove down royal parade between rows of fiery autumn trees. the sky was dull. that drab melbournian autumn sky. and as i drove under those trees, the leaves started falling on my car.

all the leaves are brown. and the sky is grey.

and here i sit. older. changed. in an entirely different world. the people around me are different. but the thoughts in my head are the same. i'm thinking that i love this landscape. this windy place with its watercolour finish.

i love these rainy days.

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Genusfrog [ 9:49 am ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, September 25, 2007
THE NEW MOVIE

It's strange when you leave a past behind. you walk for the sake of going away, and you forget that in your haste to leave where you were, you're actually going somewhere else.

three months ago, adrian asked me what i thought it'd be like one year from now. maybe we all won't be doing the same things anymore, no longer hanging out in the same group, no longer having the same routines.

it turned out much faster than next year. three months was all it took for our lives to be completely flipped over. today, it bares little semblance to what it was this june. do you ever get that? like you've just walked out of one life and into another, and everything is now different?

i first felt that when i came home to malaysia and then broke up with laura. i felt like a movie character who had just stumbled into the wrong film. like clint eastwood's cowboys in a hong kong art film, or robert de niro's gangsters in a b grade zombie flick. it's weird when you move on in life and live out an entirely new routine, surrounded by new things.

but now it's different. right now, it feels like a sequel under a new director. the new director likes a different palette, so he changes the colour scheme a bit. he thinks that some of the characters should interact differently, so he readjusts the dynamics between the main players. some characters are killed off. some characters are being drafted for a mid-movie arrival. the setting is augmented but by and large the same. and though it's nothing as radical as walking onto an entirely new set, it is essentially still a distinct and new movie.

i'm living in this new movie right now. i think a few of us are. some parts of it are nice but other parts of it are really hard to watch. it's a movie with a few more giddy ideas but it's also got a lot more deep sadness. and sometimes, the poignant soundtrack moments mask the fact that there is a bitterly painful subplotline going on underneath. as the lead actor in my own narrative, i can't say i know what this new director is doing.

just please don't kill anyone else off.

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Genusfrog [ 9:01 am ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
THE ONSET OF NIGHT

"It's sad to fall asleep. You have to... separate. They say "sleep together", but it's not true"
- Patricia Franchini, A bout de souffle.

Streetlamps. headlights. neon signboards and lit condominium windows. nothing captures the bleak isolation of loneliness better than the onset of night.

the sun falls away and the dramatic evening sky too quicky expires from yellow to orange to blue and then black. the long and short of it falls inside the parameters of about one hour. and then, it begins.

that slow crawl between eight and eight, when functional people retire to their television armchairs, families and pyjamas. the less functional crawl out into their subcultures to worship the god of nocturnal activity. and all this while, the lonely stare out of rain-stained windows, looking at both the city's celebration of after-hours and the suburb's comfort of steady domestic habitation.

when i look at the highway, i see all the lonely cars, each carrying one person. there are so many of them, but they're not together. they drive right next to each other, but they are protected from one another, safe within the four walls of autolock, power windows and bizarre prog-techno car alarms. when they pull up at traffic lights, nobody looks sideways. and while we accept these things at midday in the name of a busy working populace, the same separation feels less deserved, and harder to breach, when it happens when it's dark.

there is something about the onset of night - the arrival of crushed-out shadows and weird lamp glows - that colours every mundane thing with a tint of sadness. maybe it's because nighttime is when the whole world go back into their homes, their safe places, and indulge in the comfort of warmth, love and security. for the lonely, the disparate men and women who at some point rejected a life of warmth, love and security, the night reminds them of the price they're paying for living a life of separation.

like what miss franchini said. nocturnal separation. the time to look inward and be private people until the sunrise compels us to look out again.

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Genusfrog [ 9:59 am ] | 2 comments

Tuesday, August 07, 2007
REASON TO LOVE

Fergus: Are those your new shoes?
Shuyee: Yep! See.
Fergus: What's your favourite pair of shoes? The one you love the most?
Shuyee: It's the one that hurts the most. It was love at first sight.
Fergus: Hahahaa... Why are we all like that?

Yeah, sometimes we're all like that. we go out into this bizarre world and we fall in love knowing how much it's going to hurt us. the fact is that love and pain seem to be intertwined in some cruel but strangely addictive relationship. it's hard to know where the line blurs between loving in spite of great hurt and hurting because of great love.

and we keep walking back in. maybe it's a compulsion, driven by the very image in which we were assembled. maybe we're just taking an intrinsic lead from the jesus whose extreme love led to and stemmed from extreme pain. maybe we don't know better, and we keep trying to injure ourselves in the name of a big heart.

but someone once told me that pain without redemption is meaningless. and someone else told me that pain is not abstract, it's personal.

if that's the case then maybe i shouldn't speak of pain and love as if they were divorced from the people feeling the cut and heart. and maybe if that's so, then pain finds meaning when the redemption makes sense. a pretty pair of shoes, though they knock your feet up pretty bad, might be redemptive enough as an object of beauty. a creation, though it grows mouldy by lunchtime every day, might be redemptive enough as a people for god to love.

but where in this congestion of my knots and stuff will i find my good reason to love?

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Genusfrog [ 11:49 am ] | 0 comments

Monday, May 28, 2007
LEASEHOLD

Leasehold property make me feel sad. they remind me that at some point, everything that you try to hold on to so tightly gets taken away from you. sometimes by some strange and mysterious force. sure, you set up home, decorate it, put in some plants, maybe even live a life there. the cracks in the paint, the drippy tap and the windows that don't open properly after a few years, all trick you into believing that you've settled down. but it doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. it's your family but it's not really your wall.

i don't like to lose things. i just don't know how to hold on to the things i have. if i had it my way, i would probably never change anything in my life but i know now that when the weird hand of removing starts waving, there's nothing more you can do if you're not the one it's clutching. after a while, it just becomes a routine of moving what ought to be meaningful things along some factorial conveyor belt, to be passed on to the next loser. who i might add is only one because he too has also just lost.

i wish i had more freehold friendships. the kind that nobody can take away.

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Genusfrog [ 11:32 am ] | 1 comments

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
TEST DRIVE

Adrian: eh when are you gonna remove the plastic covers off your seatbelt buckles?
Shu yee: dunno lah. i like them.
Adrian: makes you feel like you're still test-driving your car.
Fergus: haahaha. ya. maybe you can test drive your car forever.

You can't test-drive anything forever. after a while, either the bubblewrap needs to come off, and you take it home with you, or you put it back on a shelf.

i wish i could live in a bubblewrapped life, where all the hard-knocks are cushioned and nobody gets hurt. nobody needs to get hurt because nobody's really being owned and used. everyone's just on display, a shop window item that points towards other more real and tangible copies. people would pick us up, hold us against themselves, try us, look at us in the mirror and then bring a store-room copy home to do all the dirty work: the wearing, the using, the washing, the dropping and breaking.

it's a bit dehumanising but that's how i want to be today. i wanna be test-driven. and after mr toad's wild ride grinds to its proverbial halt, i would be restored to my original position without chip or bruise. like that button which restores the factory settings. i wish today that they could restore my factory settings. put me back into bubblewrap and seal the box with new tape.

you can't test-drive forever. after a while, you have to head back to the showroom and go home.

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Genusfrog [ 10:01 am ] | 1 comments

Tuesday, April 17, 2007
NEW SHOES

New shoes are nice. i just bought a couple pairs of new shoes because the older two were falling apart. apparently, everything's getting replaced nowadays.

that's the thing about new shoes... they feel really nice in the shop. they look spanking cool and they're quiet, like german cars quiet. but maybe it's this universal prank that the yellow lighting, screwey mirrors and mall air-cond play in unisive cohesion, conspiring so that two days after you walk out with your funky new footwear, they start to shed their original splendour.

take my new adidas shoes, for instance. little did i know that new adidas rubber has this squeaky thing going on so that the more i walk, the more i sound like a four-year-old in one of those shoes that go bip-bip-bip everytime they set their foot down. and it's not even a stepping down thing. when i raise my foot and twist it around inside, it makes that sound. bip-bip-bip.

and my new working shoes - the most comfortable hush puppy in the world - i swore in the store that i could walk forever with this puppy. the left heel... something... what's wrong? it's not like the right heel. it's stiff... and clunky. maybe the leather needs to be worn out. or worn in. maybe i need to give these two shoes more time. be more patient with them and eventually, they'll be as glorious as i originally saw them to be.

i wish friendships weren't so much like new shoes. i wish i could spend forever with my friends in the friends store, deluded forever by the warm lights, wonky mirrors and cool air. we could all be happy trying each other on, fun with the mirror and mounds of shoes. we would always feel nice, look good and sound just right. safe in the comfort of relational commerce, we can put away our insecurities in the name of good humour and a fresh new look. and last year's shoe of the year will forever be the shoe of the year.

my shoes are my shoes. i've bought them. and i love them.

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Genusfrog [ 5:17 pm ] | 2 comments

Monday, March 26, 2007
THE MALAYSIAN DREAM

I'm all lost in the supermarket. I can no longer shop happily.
- The Clash

That's The Clash critiqueing the culture of consumerism and loneliness. shopping for a life can be fun when you start out. the world is a blank page for you to write on. but after a while, it gets tedious. you realise that the world is not really a blank page, but more like a multiple choice paper. and all the freeform ideas you have don't really fit into the templates for an urban life.

the malaysian dream. what would i do for it?

see, if that were a hyphothetical question, i'd be in good hands. but it's not. and essentially what i'm going through now is the phase where i count the cost of the malaysian dream and consider if it's something i really want to add to my cart. i don't know how they marketed the malaysian dream to you. to me, it's a condo, two japanese cars, a wife and 2.5 kids, a college fund and some investments tucked away somewhere. it's the life that everyone seems to want. everyone except me.

i've seen enough condos to know that after a while, they all start looking the same. i've seen enough japanese cars to know that they're all approximations of each other. and i've met enough young families to know that all of them are chasing after the same pie in the sky, wife and kids and dog all in tow.

why would i want something like that?

security? camaraderie? the part of me that actually wants it, is it responding to some intrinsic need for these things or is it just years of social programming? picket fences are only nice if you know what picket fences mean. until then, they're just a bunch of white sticks. so why am i so torn between buying into this malaysian dream and the opposite - living a life of sheer abandon, anarchic and impulsive, unshackled, adventurous and free?

have you ever met a guy who had pre-wedding jitters eventhough he wasn't about to get married? yeah, that's what it feels like. i always say that a man isn't ready to marry until he experiences pre-wedding jitters because it's only in pre-wedding jitters that a man properly considers the absolute finality and fullness of his commitment to the girl he's picked. and after considering it fully, and going ahead with it, you know he's in good hands, cos he's counted the cost.

the same thing stands before me. this looming, constraining life of rigid routine that i might grow to love one day, this arduously mundane back-and-forth populated with cute lovable loved-ones, this repetitive, self-sacrificing, self-controlled tedium, this boredom, this... this... normalcy.

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Genusfrog [ 9:09 am ] | 1 comments

Friday, March 16, 2007
TRANSIT

"Change is the only constant lah!", charlotte said as i quietly contemplated news of one of my favourite editors leaving the office in sydney.

"I can't live in a life like that. you know", i said back to her. "i can't live in a life where everything keeps changing".

i just can't. it saddens me too much to consider a life that is constantly in flux, forever renewing, eternally pursuing the next better thing. why do we do that? keep changing.

i'm really happy for my editor in sydney. she's getting what looks like a really ace job. and fair game to anyone who's getting good gigs lined up for them. some people will say that i've got a pretty good gig lined up myself, and that'd be true. but i just don't take to change so well after all. a few weeks ago, adrian asked me if i was someone who took to change well. at that time, i told him i get excited with change. and while that is true, i can't shake off this insecurity that's tailing me everywhere now that what looked like my golden season in my present office seems to have come to an end.

my lunch squad is dissolving. my favourite product was axed. i've changed seats so many times and i don't know anyone's face in this office anymore. some days i think i'm doing okay but if i really face up to it, i think i can say for certain that my happiest days in this office are behind me now. maybe another chapter has closed and i'm just not dealing with the fact that i'm smack in page two of the next storyline. maybe i'm mistaken in my assurance of where i think i am. people around me are moving on.

why am i still here?

when will i pick my bags up and get out of this one, very long airport holiday? you know when you're in transit, the airport bookstores become your best friend. there's something familiar in all bookstores: road maps, travel guide books, coffee table pictorials... there's something reassuring about seeing all these same things no matter which airport bookstore in whatever country you're in.

but my transit is not in an airport and there is no bookstore with all that familiar paraphernalia to remind me that some things always stay the same.

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Genusfrog [ 1:48 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, March 13, 2007
THE WESTERNFRONT

It's that time of the year again. Late enough so your vision is clouded by the fog of cynicism, but early enough to look at the rest of the year and reassess what you want to fill it with. for me, this means dreaming of a holiday. and today, i wanna go to the westernfront.

i wanna go and be alone in the desert. i wanna see the red earth and yellow rocks and all their purple skies at sunset. i wanna set camp and barbequeue wild meat like they do in the pictures. you know those pictures? those old westerns. rocky mountain westerns.

i want to smell the sand and kick the dust at my feet. i want to squint in the sun and drink out of those bottles. i'll have a horse named whiskey and a ten gallon hat. we'd ride all day into town where i saddle into a saloon and chat up naive redneck girls whose fathers keep shotguns under the counter. i'd make them laugh and leave before anyone starts any shit. and in the evenings, i'll stare at the desert and wonder what kind of life lies beyond the rocky plain.

a city. a job. a girl.

i'd lower my hat and sleep by the fire. the moon looks so beautiful in the desert.

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Genusfrog [ 1:37 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, February 23, 2007
HOME AND LEAVING

Today, i leave muar to head back again.

i don't know how you feel about your hometown, but i love mine. it's changed alot in the nine years since i left, first for the bright lights of melbourne and then for the madness that is KL. i feel sad whenever i leave muar. it reminds me that with each passing year, i'm leaving a part of my childhood behind, to move on without me. and in this, i too am moving on, without it.

this chinese new year, i didn't meet my old friends - not even one. i didn't bother because our reunions always gravitate around a gambling table, with drinking and small-talk the auxillary features. i could have, i guess. i had all the numbers in my phone. and if i met them, i could have kept in step with all their changes: of jobs, marital status, looks, scenes, gossip. but that didn't matter much to me. instead, i spent most of my time at home. and in the little time i spent outside, i preferred to inspect the changes in my town: its storefronts, the new shops and new houses, the redirection of its one-way streets, and the unstoppable dilapidation of some places that will never go away. the neighbourhood provision shop just got some new owners. but it still looks the same from outside. i need the comfort of knowing that some things just don't change.

this year, i didn't bother playing catch-up with my old friends. those guys are fine without me. and though muar seems to be doing no worse, i can't say the same for myself. and i'm definitely not fine without muar.

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Genusfrog [ 3:16 pm ] | 4 comments

Wednesday, February 21, 2007
ALONE WITH FAMILY

I'm not really interested in meeting people anymore. i'm quite happy if the world left me alone to mind my own business, because i'm in the mood to be alone. i don't want to visit my parents' friends, i don't want to entertain guests, and i don't want to make small talk with relatives. my family has always been a bit like that. whether what i'm going through is a wicked trick of genetics or a textbook example of familial modelling, i seem to have taken their lead and launched this anti-socialness to a ten ton truck offensive of solitary stubbornness.

i keep telling people that i have my movie to cut, and that's why i wanna be alone, and though that doesn't work in some social settings across this CNY, i do wonder if this excuse is merely just that - an excuse, a scapegoat for some deeper-rooted condition of alienation from family and a desire to deal with and work out the fact that i think nobody understands me. it's sad because in my bid to find quietness and some peace of mind, i end up pushing away the people who love me the most. these are people who care that i sit around the table to eat a meal, they care that i'm in the car going with them to a friend's house. but i don't care. why da heck don't i care?

i just wanna be left alone. but it's a selfish wanna be left alone. it's selfish because when i'm through with my solitude, when this season of loneliness passes, i'll go back to them and want them to remain as they were before i left. but that't not how it works. they're not the one constant in my life. on God is. and as i desperately seek time to be alone, i forget that every moment i spend without my family is time during which they too are changing, growing, becoming different people as i have. but they're doing it together. and i'm doing mine alone.

like now. everyone's downstairs eating lunch together. and i'm upstairs with my notebook. talking about it.

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Genusfrog [ 1:09 pm ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, December 27, 2006
This Christmas felt like two Christmasses ago.

Lonely. Dislocated. And aquatically disastrous.

Actually, I wasn't eventually lonely this Christmas. In fact, I had some great gifts and the best company.

Thanks Mel. And thanks Christmas Orphans.

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Genusfrog [ 5:01 pm ] | 0 comments