Unhealthy Solitude

It is unhealthy to be alone for so long. Linguistic cognition dulls, making speaking and writing - and perhaps thinking - very difficult tasks. Perhaps I should begin speaking to myself or an 'imaginary friend' just to keep the neural links sharp. Ah, sudoku might help in re-sharpening my critical faculties. In fact, I think I'll do just that right now.

Writing

Is it just me, or have I forgotten the art of cogent writing? Maybe the anxiety is to blame for the constant turgid paragraphs I seem to be churning out these days. My first history essays ever submitted in JC were labeled 'promising' or 'A', and the same can be said for my poetry comparisons. These days, I struggle to keep everything above a 'C' grade. Perhaps I am squeezing too many ideas into a small number of words, hence the convoluted passages. No matter, more writing needs to be done.

My psychiatrist thinks I place too much emphasis on my grades, but it doesn't take much pondering to see why.

Scars

The scars, they never really heal. They are fissures that ooze with flaming red and yellow, its slime an objection to the skin's youthful glow.

What do these days amount to? Am I a foregone failure or an ascending aspirant? When I am not drugged by sleep the slimy filth of life spills from the scars of yesteryear, yesterday, but I struggle (in vain?) to wash it all off and purify my life of two sins: mediocrity and sloth. But fate would not have it so. No, my head is caught in a vise and the virtues of industry crack under such pressure.

There's nothing more to write.

Run

I'm running away.

I don't want to face tomorrow.

That's why I don't sleep.

That's why I keep eating.

So tomorrow will never come.

I won't have to catch up.

On what I've not done these 2 days.

On what I've not done months before.

On what life has not done for me.

No, its for what it has done to me.

A few stray thoughts and the cookie crumbles.

I want cookies, I want mochi.

But all the stalls are closed.

I have wheat cereal and milk.

Again and again, I need more.

Give me more.

I'll call Mcdonalds.

I'll spent $20 on one order.

I'll grow fatter.

I'll spend my savings on these slothful sins.

Because I have nothing to spend time on.

Or life on.

I'll eat it all in my room.

The walls will shield me.

The internet will shield me.

But my table crawls with ants.

I don't know how to call for it.

One by one, they go offline.

Before my words are formed.

Before I reach for them.

Before I try.

Unlike before.

But I didn't need it before.

Only now, when I want to stay in the now.

Help.

Foregone Conclusions

Yes, that's what it was. Literature: how the hell do I decipher James joyce's POA or detect a friggin iambic pentameter? Villanelles, Petrachan/Shakespearean/Spencerian sonnets, iambic and trochaic verses...

Memorising the structure or technical details is useless unless I am somehow able to detect its literary significance. They said we should have an 'A' for 'O' level English in order to take literature, but the language component is severely overrated. It is LITERARY SENSITIVITY that separates the A-graders from the C-graders and unfortunately for me, I've been stuck in the latter band for... too long. It doesn't help that out poetry and POA tutor is a high-handed bitch who seems to take pleasure in putting us down - never an encouraging word to aid our learning in a tedious and often frustrating subject.

If anyone out there thinks its easy to do well in literature, I'd like to see them try. In the meantime, my grades - given the unfavourable situation I find myself in - is a foregone conclusion. Maybe you could write an eulogy for me when its over, it'll be the closest I'll ever come to sound literary writing.

2007

The phrase "chasing a formless dream" would be a suitable epigram for 2007. In that year, I chased girls, dreams, studies and some vague goal that now evades all memory. They're all related of course. I remember I chased 'J', but after a series of conflicts that I am largely - in retrospect - to blame for, I turned my attention to my studies instead. One could say I escaped into into the pages I scribbled on and I didn't do too badly. Being the top history student for the mid-years and the 2nd for the promotional was gratifying.

I took up H3 history. Indeed, I was the only one offered it. Perhaps I chased too many things, had too many dreams and spread myself too thin. Or then again, maybe I simply got complacent and underestimated the general weight of my studies. Sometimes I wonder whether I was delusional, and so did some of my classmates. I'd be going off on some new campaign, or writing some new article that didn't really make complete sense but hey, I was an idealist. I was in Othello, PUS, Temasek Sem., Orientation, Tamil competitions - everywhere! My friends in PJ even found my photo in their yearbook. But what was it I was chasing or, turning the picture around, what was I running from?

Perhaps it was the past, the way psychiatric ills became social ills. Fopped in a school I quite disdained, scrambling to insulate and protect myself from what I perceived as the onslaught of the world. It is in such a mess of memory that pseudo-scientific psychoanalysis makes sense: I was driven by past fears, seeing threats that weren't, perceiving almost everything as an ego-threatening challenge. I think I was quite successful in running away until things crashed in early 2008. Again, in retrospect, things were probably not as rosy. I don't think I was as smart or knowledgeable as I initially thought, but learning tends to do that to people.

So what is the point of this recollection? I think... actually I don't really know. I believe it was the people around me that made it so special. Teachers, dear classmates, vivacious friends and all really made me look forward to school. As I pulled away from school in 2008, I pulled away from them as well. School is a much colder place these days even though its walls are still painted in the same bright orange and sunny yellow. I guess I'm quite a megalomaniac, enjoying the spotlight of controversy and taking pleasure in hearing my own voice, looking at my own pictures and seeing my name in print - things that affirmed my own sense of worth through some warped and twisted mirror.

These days, I find little reason to walk with that determined stride I used to have nor lift my gaze to what's ahead. I shuffle my feet, take my time, look down at the curiously intriguing path in front of me. I don't dream big dreams and ask big questions, just plod along like (sigh) everyone else - maybe even worse. One Freudian slip said it all: an essay written this year was dated 2007, to my classmates' amusement.

Tiny Steps

Stop asking big questions, stop looking at the big picture. Focus on the now, the task at hand, and that will bring me forward. Work was done today, that pleases me.

For that same reason, I eschewed the public press and GP. Humanity never ceases to renew its own pain, and I don't care about it anymore. My description of the older Stephen in James Joyce's POA can be applied to me: "Politically aware without a care".

Joking

The previous post was not a joke, nor is this. I'm not the one joking around, fate is - that unseen malicious witch that makes mocks of man's endeavors, who casts all hopes in a darker hue and robs the sparkle from the eyes of Youth.

Today was a complete waste, I didn't achieve any of my objectives. There was little progress in a any of my 4 subjects, unless one counts finding out about one's ignorance a step forward. I don't, simply because I believe in real, material, absolute progress, not "ideological" advancement. Hell, I'm not a friggin armchair philosopher, and I never intend to be one.

I'm just slacking now, and will soon binging on Macs. Right now, my sense of futility outweighs previous concerns about weight, productivity, and the other things I consider important. Tomorrow? I guess I'll resume my tedious, tenuous studies. I am not confident about this, but I still strive to excel in whatever I can excel in, while there flames of willpower still burn.

This blog is going public. I will not shut these things up in a box anymore, but I will make it anonymous. Don't ask me what the point is. I've long ceased to believe that there is a fundamental point in anything - one point is a point only for some other point, a closed web - but I still do what I do because the exigencies of life and living require it... but I might as well do it with a smile.

Ha. Ha.

My Conviction.

I am ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

This blog is a crutch, a place whose very existence encourages a crutch mentality. Today, I freaked about an essay's mediocrity and wanted to run away, either to this blog or to my appointment at IMH. I did neither, only shut off all thoughts and rewrote the whole damn essay and even though it isn't very good, I am proud of my effort.

Those feelings of doubt and vacillating moments where I stood tottering on the edge of despondence are not unlike the feelings I have before a karate tournament. I just have to bite the bullet and go fight hard, although I am my toughest opponent. My previous boycott of this blog had failed, but now I'm quite through with this putrid confessional.

Doubts came to me throughout the day and though I am aware that I had been lying to myself about many things, I know that I'll have to do my best. The future? That's beyond me right now and I've little idea how I'll fare, but as I told someone before, "keep the future in its place". 

Today, I've understood the global economic crises of the '70s and '80s, apportioning praise and blame according to the causes and consequences of events. When I look back upon my JC days, I do not want to blame myself. I consider my own mediocrity a sin, but wasting in sloth is by far the worser evil.

Ous.

Labyrinth

Again again again!

Head, body, aching aching aching

Nerves frayed, can't study, can't find the right words, can't form ideas into words

Black and white hammers, nervous anxious agitated impatient

Frustrated frustrated rage

Builds up, kills me

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 days wasted, wasted, lagging behind

catch up, must, imperative, categorical, what?

Write how? Argue what? Argh

Read run hide read die

Effort

I'm not sure why this blog even exists anymore - there's little need for a distinction between a 'happy' blog and a melancholic one, simply because the latter overwhelms daily life.

So far, I've been diligently studying what I need to study. I'm making progress with literature (so I hope), reading up on history, making headway in those two. Economics has remained stagnant, KI is... reserved for weekends. I need more time: there too few hours in a day, and fewer still where good sleep is found. I study at a snail's pace and sleep fitfully. In fact, sleep is a misnomer - its more like lying down, closing my eyes and hoping for the best.

I better not give this too much expression lest it distract me further. Yea, I better get back to studying. Nevermind this (just another repressed issue).