The tree outside my room has almost obscured my window.

For some reason, this makes me irrevocably sad.

Tender is the night

Lights in the city never go out.

During the night, everything in my empty apartment is awash with a stale fluorescent haze. I don't like turning the lights on. I loathe that disgustingly warm glow. It always pierces through the darkness and ruins the night's natural composure.

Sometimes it feels good to drown in the darkness and let it hide those thoughts you would never utter aloud otherwise. The night must collect a lot of secrets and tears and silent sufferings. Perhaps that's why it's so good at comforting you. It's had many lovers after all.

Hopeful.

The most beautiful word.

after awhile

"
after awhile

you learn the subtle difference between 
holding a hand
and chaining a soul

after awhile

you learn to build your roads on today 
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

after awhile

you learn to plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

"

lighthome

"

you held me captive

thief that takes it all

"

Exclamations of a Student Returning Home

"Oh my god. How is this bed so soft?"

"OH SWEET JESUS THIS BED IS HEAVENLY."

"MUM I'M NOT LEAVING THIS BED TODAY OKAY."

"What happened to our bathroom? Did it shrink?"

"MUM, OUR SHOWER IS HUGE! DID I SHRINK?"

"Oh my god, sofas are the most glorious invention ever."

"OH SWEET JESUS, MUM YOU GOT A RECLINING SOFA?"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh yeeeeeeahhhhhhhh..." (on the recliner)

"I am in a giant bubble of pure comfort... ahhhhhh yes... bubble... comfort... soft..."

"Are those... vegetables?"

"Is that... non-canned meat?"

"Is this... a proper home-cooked meal?"

"No! Grandma! Too much food- can't... finish... afjdklajf;fdalf-" *muffled gasps for air*

"I AM WATCHING TV ON THE RECLINER AND EATING GRANDMA'S FOOD; I HEREBY ANNOUNCE MY LIFE AS COMPLETE."

I feel like I've aged into the face of an old woman.

New year's resolutions

1. Absorb knowledge of good music, watch cult classic films, read literary canon.

2. Learn the guitar and sing sad love songs on the balcony.

3. Start a cassette tape collection.

4. Meet new, like-minded people with similar interests, similar pursuit of intellect, similar aspirations to not just be an ordinary passer-by in the world.

5. Be the small girl walking around in a big city with an old camera, capturing those fleeting moments of day-to-day city charm on film.

6. Go to a strip club.

7. Turn 21 with no regrets.

8. Travel, experience, (love).

9. Be rid of insecurity; the most beautiful people don't need assurance of their worth.

10. And lastly, as always, be happy.

Akira Kurosawa's Dream

Dreams are such a fascinating and eerie concept. The frightful thing about them is the fact that although they're utter nonsense, among the nonsensical often lies something much deeper and grander than your sense of self.

Apparently Akira Kurosawa is a master director of brilliant films, and creates beautiful, beautiful imagery like no other. I guess watching his most personal and illusive masterpiece on crappy 240p quality wasn't the brightest choice, but as soon as I heard about this film I was so curious to watch it.

I'm not sure why, but I've always had extremely vivid dreams that often border on the hallucinatory when I'm still in that groggy, half-awake state, and half of my mind is still well immersed in the reality I was living seconds ago. I guess that's why dreams have always had this eerie, dangerous quality about them to me - as if your own dreams can turn against you at any moment.

Kurosawa's Dreams is supposed to be based on real dreams Akira Kurosawa had since his childhood till the day he wrote the script. That in itself is a fascinating concept, because haven't we all had those few distinctive dreams throughout our lives that even years and years after, we can still remember them detail for detail? 

I think you have to sink into a dream-like state yourself when you watch Kurosawa's Dreams. It's kudos to Kurosawa's amazing talent at being able to evoke such powerful emotions of fear and enchant the viewer with such striking cinematography, even if said viewer was viewing it on a small 13-inch monitor and 240p. The film is split into eight "dreams", each separate stories with himself at the centre as a child and a man. Although it really required patience to sit through all two hours of sometimes silent imagery, each "dream" had that one striking moment that had me sitting there, holding my breath with an eerie, prickly feeling washing over me. 

I loved the first four dreams, all loosely based on Japanese folklore. The silent, deadly progression of fox spirits; the slow, slow and painful clinking of chains and raspy breathes as men trudge through a blizzard; a surviving commander staring into the mouth of a black tunnel. Every single sequence makes you question why the people are doing what they're doing. But that's what gives these sequences such a pronounced dream-like quality - the characters' immersion in such nonsensical reasoning.

Isn't it amazing how he can create an atmosphere of such deadly tension, simply with a little boy and a few men and women in fox masks? I love the music, the silence, the exact movements of the foxes in this scene. The feeling of having stumbled upon something sacred and forbidden, the feeling of being caught in the act is overwhelming. 

I don't know why, I just find this film so fascinating. Even though the last four dreams were decidedly tacky and over-bearing, and the whole thing a little bit lengthy and self-indulging of Kurosawa, I know that those few eerie scenes will stay on my mind for a long time to come. 

Kurosawa really captured the logic of the dream-world so well. In a vivid dream, everything makes so much sense, everything is emotionally over-bearing. When you awaken, you can't remember why you cared so much about such nonsense. Yet I always get this feeling of questioning the "sense" in reality too - doesn't it all seem like such nonsense to you? Couldn't it all be a dream and we wake up to the realisation that we haven't been living in reality at all?

priorities

What's more important?

A scared and lost little girl once said in doubt, "Needless to say I'm starting to feel a little tired inside. Like a tiny worm gnawing away at the insides of my heart and resolve. Blood is starting to leak through the cracks, oozing its way lazily, taking its time because it knows sooner or later the dam is going to burst and a torrent of blood and sweat and pain will pour through, drowning out all previous attempts of 'whattheheartwantswhattheheartwants' ; that phrase always echoing in time with my heartbeats to remind myself: don't give up yet."

How precious those words are. Darling little words of anxiety and uncertainty, winding their way into a little girl's head. Time is of the essence but the essence that makes time bearable is fading fast - like the lingering scent of your shirt or the bitter sweet waft of last night's perfume, citrus becomes stale and "whattheheartwantswhattheheartwants"  becomes "what do I want?".

The only words that hold true are those four, the persistent ones who have permanently lodged themselves to the inside of my head and my heart: One in there and three behind my eyes, so that every time my heart aches I hear a "don't.", and when those nasty little tears come out to shame me, I hear the rest of the four say, "...give up yet".

Sometimes I feel like I want my life to be a film.

But not a sappy, happily-ever-after Hollywood film.

I want it to be one of those artsy foreign films with subtitles.

There would be a group of young adults.
They would be smoking in the middle of a crowded basement in Germany.
There would be the sound of deafening music, drowning out all rational thought.

These kids  - because they are kids - would be lost and confused and have no idea where they're going in life.

Then, there's going to be a long shot of the cobbled streets above.

The camera will focus on the paved ground that's covered in drops of rain from the storm earlier.

The film will be dark and grungy and brutally honest.

But like a good any good foreign film, everything shown will somehow retain a lucid sense of romanticism.

cat power

"come with me

my love

to the sea

the sea of love

I wanna tell you

how much

I love you"

the misconception about happiness

People often have this misconception that I'm happy. Such a misconception is conceived when a stranger or an acquaintance or even a friend looks at my life (perhaps through the narcissist facade of Facebook, perhaps through that brief, summative glance that always happens when two people walk past each other on a crowded street), and think, "Hmmm, not bad, looks pretty good."

As if by some instinctual built-in reflex, most people tend to perceive others as having better lives than their own. I'm very guilty of this. Everyday I will walk past strangers and scroll past carefully articulated social media profiles with a sense of curiousity and envy. It's like I have this unquenchable thirst for understanding and for insight into someone else's life. Someone similar to me, someone radically different to me, it's fascinating to try and imagine their lives and seeing through their eyes every midnight to midnight. But the distinction I think people should be aware of in terms of happiness and what not, is that a good life does not necessarily mean you can be happy.

Happiness is a vague concept, what is it? To be happy is to be what? To feel what? In this day and age people are often confined in safe little pods with a sign on the door saying "Warning: Comfort Zone, DO NOT OPEN". Staying in these little pods will guarantee us safe, quaint and content lives. But is that happiness? Does having a good job and a good personal life guarantee some form of happiness? Does love grant us true happiness? Of course, these questions have to be answered in regard to the individual, as each person has their own ideals of a "perfect life".

But what I really want to articulate on, is not 'what is happiness' or if fulfilling your ideal life and dreams and aspirations equal happiness. It's about a much more subtle operand that people hardly ever consider as part of the equation for happiness.

I'm not sure how to describe this. But for me, personally (and I'm guessing there are other people out there who deal with similar issues), I can have all the wealth and romance and miracles in the world, I can have the most amazing and fantastical life I could've ever dreamed of, but there will always be this thin, almost invisible barrier between me and the words, "I am happy." What is that barrier? It's simply that small and deceivingly demure voice, lounging in the back of my head. One day in the depth of the night while I'm trying to fall asleep, the voice will run through an entire textbook of curious thoughts and questions and observations about the world and about life. The next morning I will wake up and those semi-conscious curiousities will have formed into doubts and negative, self-demeaning thoughts. And then the next night, suffocated by darkness, those feelings of negativity will swallow me up until I'm trapped inside a giant bubble of distorted imagery, made up of a now thick barrier of impenetrable glass.

Like a badly designed roller coaster, perhaps these bad days will only grace me with their presence on occasion and leave as abruptly as they had come. Or perhaps like on a particularly erratic section of the roller coaster (which the designer had undoubtedly not consulted with the engineer), these days will force me through relentless iterations of loop-the-loops until when I finally make it back to solid ground my head's a bit fucked up and my entire perception of the world is as distorted as someone taking excessive external stimulation.

The point is, I'm sick of people thinking other people have perfect lives. I'm sick of people thinking just because my life has all the right ingredients to make a "good" one that I am happy or that I should be happy. No one but each individual themselves can ever truly understand how they feel about their own life and why they feel that way. Because no one but yourself can ever hear that little voice inside your head, the voice tormenting you on those bad nights when you can't tell right from wrong and every thought is coated in delusion.

I don't take my life for granted. I'm intellectually capable enough of realising how blessed I am (believe it or not), and how very  much I have to be thankful for. But just because I want to be happy, just because I have all the "good things" in life and I logically should be happy, doesn't mean I can be. I can't control that little voice. If control over the human mind and its emotions could be so easily mastered, the percentage of bad things in this world would drop faster than a prostitute's panties. Just like how a certain image can provoke a helpless smile or a certain scent can entice a particular memory - the little voice is as reflexive to the body and mind as those things.

Perhaps some people don't ever have to dwell on happiness in this level of detail. But I won't say I'm envious, because perhaps they deal with a different type of little voice in their heads.

Right now I'm not exactly sure how I feel. But if I were to try describe it to you, I guess I would liken it to the feeling of eating a delicious apple, but then tragically plagued by food poisoning as a result and now lie in a fierce long battle with the unforgiving aftermath of such unhindered enjoyment. The question is, if I knew how delicious the apple is and yet I also knew it would make me ill, would I still eat it?

My emotions seem to be strapped tight to a roller coaster designed by that erratic designer who has a complete disregard for the engineer's advice for safety and basic physics. Life has never been more bittersweet, but from inside the barrier everything seems more like bitterbitterbittersweet.

I'm waiting for the day when someone comes along with a futuristic laser-drill like in the spy movies and use it to cut a clean window in my barrier. Then I could stick my head out and suddenly be blasted with a wondrous feeling  of reality, as how the majority perceive it.