Nessun Dorma

Nessun Dorma. None shall sleep.

Indeed, no part of me can sleep in these troubling nights. The heart weighs heavy, the eyes grow weary and the soul wears thin. A spectre remains, chained by thoughts that threaten to grow into nightmares when I close my eyes and then refuse to disperse when the dawn arrives.

Dawn. The sun and its life giving light seem to pierce right through me as I emerge from the darkness, and I shun into the shadows where I can cool my thoughts. A burden burns on my mind. It is afraid of the sun, and makes me its accomplice. Misery craves for companions. I refuse to feed it, but it shackles me nonetheless, and I cannot step out into the summer wind.

As the cold rain lashes, the familiar gusts bring a familiar chill to my heart. I huddle at night, shielding myself from the searching wind. Fearing to sleep, sleeping from fear. The darkness of the room is a comfort. The shadows play on the walls and accompany me. I stare at them. They stare back. And in them, I see myself.

And I cannot sleep.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thights, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats. 1920.
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Small, furry mammals

I think I almost lost it last night…the frustration, anger and sadness welled up like a flood and threatened to overcome. Thankfully there’s the small furry mammal that is such a good listener and friend..and endured with my outpouring of woe despite the massive headache. (Thank you!) It really is a small matter, but those who know me will know how incredibly sensitive I get about anything concerning my sisters, or my guitar. Not that they’re equal or anything. But oh well…Everyone’s got their quirks right? I guess life’s about giving and taking..Hopefully I will be able to get this off my chest without causing too much disturbance to the peace.

I love strawberries.

Just a post

The past few months have been a roller coaster ride, and I have just barely gotten hold of myself a few weeks ago. I need to put so much more effort in my relationships…It is always the people around me that I take for granted that pull me up in times like this, when I am going around being silly and downright stupid. Hurting people and myself, doing things unthinkable and irrational. If not for certain individuals who really care for me, despite what I’d become, I think I’d have been lost and given over to insanity. I really am very grateful, and I thank these people from the bottom of my heart, and God for putting such great friends in my life. I cannot live in the past - in the guilt, the shame and self-blame; but I can learn to live with it, and hopefully become a better person. Thank you friends, for the changes you’ve brought about in me, though some of you may not have realised it. Glory to God, for not giving up on me, and working with His hands in my life like this(:

It is 13 days to TOC! And we’re training like crazy. At least that’s what I’d like to do…I DON’T WANT TO BE PWNED IN THE RING. It is my greatest challenge yet..OCS wasn’t half as daunting. Really. God knows I need to fight. Someone asked me today why I devote so much time to taekwondo, and how adversely it seems to be affecting my life. I told her that she wouldn’t understand even if I told her. Truth is, I cannot really express why I need to fight. Not that I don’t know the reason; there are simply no words to express it. It is in the ring, and only in the ring, that this conviction can be expressed fully. If I have to describe it, I’d use Mark’s description about his own love for his art: A quiet passion that rages inside that persists despite all circumstances, for no particular or rational reason, and has no end. (that’s what I think he’s saying anyway=P) It is passion for the sport that keeps me going, and passion in the most passionate sense. But passion needs action, and I have not been training enough! T.T Hopefully these last 2 weeks will see some fruits as I up the tempo…I cannot bear to let Xiao Nic down. When he says that he believes in my abilities as a fighter, I feel immensely encouraged. Cause all he wants to see is a good fight, even if I lose miserably. *nods* just a good fight, that’s all I ask too.

I was watching Forrest Gump for the seventh time last night (I think its the best film ever=P). I think that I, and probably very many of us, really yearn to be as straightforward and innocent as Gump. To take action and not spend so much time thinking. After all, life is lived, and not imagined. Its funny how the night always brings such up random thoughts such as these about life in general(: and how such thoughts can bring the strangest people together. On a random note, I think S.E.N.S makes some REALLY beautiful music(:

Time flies, and this semester will be over soon. I spent the first half of it as a dead man. I shall see how I fare at the end of it(:

“Forlorn! the very word is like a bell   
  To toll me back from thee to my sole self!  
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well  
  As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.  
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades  
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,  
    Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep  
          In the next valley-glades:  
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?  
    Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?”

- from Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats

3 years

I am like a lot of things;
Always changing,
Always moving.
Never the same,
Yet always familiar.

I am like a lot of things;
Filled with memory,
Full of regret.
Never at peace,
Yet, on the surface, always serene.

I am like a lot of things;
Like a lot of people,
Like the rest of the world.
With enough angst to stir up a tempest,
And enough patience to weather a squall.
Never satisfied,
Just like it should be.

-12 Dec 06

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What a difference 3 years make, and yet some things just haven’t changed:)

Picking up trash in dresses

It kinda hurts
When I hear those songs,
Visit those places
And read those lines.

But the road is long,
And you shall remain
No matter how hard I try
To forget.

So I shan’t try,
Nor cry
Anymore.

___________________

“Just remember love possesses nothing
Nor would it ever be possessed.
Oh love is love sufficient unto love
And you can figure out the rest”

Journey – Part I

Much has happened, although I remember only bits from the days that have passed.

Like waves that break upon the beach, the events of each day wash away subtly as I laid in bed at night, remembering nothing more than the foam left in the sand and gentle sounds that remind me of a cycle that never ends - an everlasting symphony played by the orchestra of waves, an eternal melody of peace.

But one day, the waves stopped. The sea turned into a different mystery. There was not a single ripple, not a single sound, and it seemed that the familiar sea that had been singing to me all my life had turned into a vast and strange lake - nothing more than a body of water. Of blackness. Of stillness.

The water, black and still, greatly disturbed me, and I missed the ocean’s tune. So I built a boat, as seaworthy as I could manage, and set out into the great lake that was once the sea in search of the source of its waves. My little boat sent ripples that went for miles on all sides, warping the canvas that painted the sky - little waves that passed unbroken for as far as I could see. And as I looked back towards the beach to my small house, I could not see it anymore on the white sands. The horizon bade me to go on, and I thought to myself, “Hmm. Point of no return.”

So I sat there for a while, soaking in the orange sunset, and wondered about the magical thing that I am searching for, thinking about what it could possibly be to drive the entirety of my little world and now that when it is gone, I would be right here in this little boat in the middle of the sea.

And as I wondered on my little boat, the evening passed into twilight, and a cold wind kissed me lightly on the cheek, making me shudder. I looked up, and in the blue and grey of the evening twilight, I saw the first stars peek out of their heavenly homes. I asked them if they knew what I was searching for, and where I might find it, but all they did was smile at me, only saying which way is the North. They were my companions for many more nights to come, shimmering and twinkling playfully in the night sky, and I grew to know their names. But even as they were familiar to me, they were always so far away.

The moon waxed and waned, and I was hopelessly lost in the great lake. But one morning, everything changed. I first noticed that the water seemed different somehow, but I could not put my finger to it. It was the same black depths that I have stared into for many days past. It smelled and tasted the same. It took me a long moment to realise what had changed since the sun set the night before. It had been so long that I had forgotten how the sea had looked like before. And I found myself muttering with wonder, uncertainty and a strange stillness in my heart,

“The waves have returned.”

 

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To be continued…

Part 1 – The Garden

The night was still, save for the cold wind blowing through the lush leaves, whispering tales and speaking secrets unknown to mortal ears. The frigid damsel wove through the olive trees, her dance an intricate pattern set from the beginning of time, through which she would pass only once in the whole of eternity.

The man who knelt in the middle of the garden, bowed over, could smell the damp earth an inch from his nose. He felt the cold wind gently embrace him, but still he was perspiring. Sweating tears, crying blood, enduring fear, resisting the demon that mocked him. He was not alone.

The moon cast her gentle silver upon the man, she dared not shine too brightly. As he raised his face, she pulled the clouds to cover her own. And as he spoke, all of heaven hearkened and wept, “It is your portion, arduous it may be. The Lord has decreed it, the angels weep for thee.”

So it was meant to be, and from that night, the angels wept indeed.

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Heavy

I’ve spent a little bit of time on retrospect recently. As I looked back this past year, I realized that life is becoming more and more complicated for me. Perhaps it is the reality that I really am who I had chosen to be, by my actions and by my thoughts. A weight heavier than an anchor has caught onto me. It appears to be called responsibility, a thing so familiar yet that I know nothing about. And the more I try to take up my own responsibilities, the less I feel I am able to. My responsibilities as a son, a brother, a student, an officer, a friend, a cell group leader, a man, a servant and a Christian – they cast upon me a shadow so great that I can hardly breathe most of the time. I have only so much time and strength.

A voice inside seems to always be saying, “Something’s gotta give.”

I just hope it’s not me.

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This was written in December 2007. It seems so funny and strange now as I read it. Maybe not funny, but definitely strange. Perhaps I have finally come to terms with the things I need to do, or the things I have been doing, after all this time. Ask not for a lighter load, they say, but for a stronger back. Couldn’t agree more.

Epiphany. It is unworldly, in every sense of the word.

3rd week

It is week 3 of the sememster, and already I am drowning in the mass of books, readings and notes. Not to mention the inconvenience of being lost on campus. It is always so frustrating to find out after getting to location to find out that I have taken the longer way.

But it is exciting.

I never thought that I would like schooling so much. It is a very strange feeling to wake up and finding myself actually looking towards to the academics of the day. I definitely have never felt this way before towards studying. I thank God that I am even here now, to have this chance to study at all.

I do have one major complaint though: my hall block is built on a fricking HILL. It says level 3, when it is actually level 9 after having to climb all those flights of steps. The last thing I need after a long day of lectures and tutorials is to have to do a mini climbing expedition (grumbles). But it does have a fair view up here, the quiet of being away from the bustle of the other hall facilities add some plus points to the place.

To say the least, I like being in uni=]