you swing from side to side
kicking asses to arses
you swim from tide to tide
with a sea turtle riding on your back

you had a purple sweater over my corpse
i must had met you in my dream
and you were a bunny with a cyan cap to hide your pointy ears
i must have had that humbling epiphany

i don't like macs after 11am
you like coloured sequins from arabian afternoons
i had pseudo egyptian meat
watching the tinted streets littered with evening dew

you fling from left to right
dreaming the metamorphosis of haiji lane
you dive from bottom to up
that become our (filthy) cushioned escape from reality

you may be far away when your eye bags meet
but staring below me at the rising tight ropes
you climb from tree to tree
like a cat who doesn't care which way

Love/Hate
Neighbour/Enemy
A/Z
Nemesis/I am loving you

you took your lens to capture Him
sunsets and to listen to the silent him
But from A to Z
reciting alphabets hardly returns to A

loose lips of yellow coconut leaves
to call a giraffe to bend his neck
and slot impressions into files
nostalgia narrowed into pipes

you jog and jog and jog
i just pretend nothing ever happens
you swim and swim and swim
i just pretend nothing ever happens

morning toasts all over again
to sing and sing and sing songs
i'm dying and dying and dying
but we're living living and living

no subjunctives, i give you a butterfly to fly with
no reprieves, i give you 5 minutes to pray
no requiems, i give you wild flowers to decorate my graveyards
no supernovas, i give you the entire universe

well. i wish i could. But nah. He will,


life is like taking a bus.
people come and go
at different stops, at different places
different buses to different destinations
different people, talking or in their own spheres
you just see what you see in that bus
so...is it time for me to press the red button?

"He had only five more minutes to live. He told me that those five minutes seemed to him an infinite time, a vast wealth; he felt that he had so many lives left in those five minutes that there was no need yet to think of the last moment, so much so that he divided his time up."

The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alvin had lived 25 years, 6 months, 14 days 55 mins. (time at that moment of writing: 5 mins before 4am, which happened to be the time he was born.)

I have so little time. so little such that i did not bother to divide my time up.

i wonder how my last 5 minutes will be like.
who will i see?
who will i be talking to?
will i be alone?
will i have peace with my Lord?
will i even be conscious of my 5 minutes?
but yes. it is a vast wealth.
when the lived life does not matter, and you will finally understand what you have been living for. (don't ask me, I don't know when my last 5 minutes will be)

so don't ask me what happens in the next 5 minutes. (They could be my last.)
don't ask me what happened in the last 5 minutes. (I consider them over and done with.)

the eternal is that 5 minutes before death.
5 minutes after wasted years of little time.
5 minutes before the wait is over.

but there is no need to think of that last moment; not yet.
the certainty of death obliterates the uncertainty of life, hence.
have that whirlpool spin inwardly.


my head spins with those thoughts.

if i had a choice, I would have chosen to be ordinary. simple. stable. just hardworking and morally upright.

but if i had another choice, I would still become who I am now; and not be ignorant of my
ignorance.



if anyone chooses to give me those practical reasons of stability, then yes,

I cannot bring you to see Das Paradies.

where
who I grow strong for,
is not for you to know.
I grow strong because there is Providence.


so i return,
to my crouching position,
behind my veiled curtains,
eyes wide shut,
muted snores,
cursed as a midwife with no babies to deliver;
sparring nightly with my monsters entourage.
and write senseless, unpoetic words.
for my sleepy mind to unfold its own secrets

You no longer belong in my 5 minutes of Paradise.
1 minute for love.
1 minute for love.
1 minute for love.
1 minute for love.
1 minute for love.
total 5 minutes for my Lord.

I can't wait to die.

bah. then i don't talk loh.

ah well.
the decision may come sooner than expected
it is just that I am undecided as to whether I should feel excited or scared.
there are just too many things I don't know.


on another note,

faces come crushing head on
shadows appear with illumination
i don't wish to see
they shine with an engulfing presence
obscuring faces

I am wakeful
from a sleep last night and the night before
I am asleep
from the waking I endured

you don't ease the pain
I suffer the happiness
hope makes my vision blurred
I forget in order to remember

watch the wind blows against us
I don't feel the wind brushing against our faces
I watch, as the wind blows against our eyes; and blind we are.
I watch with this blindness

my home becomes my prison
my prison, my home.
my escape is not my freedom
my freedom is my prison
I am home.
there is nothing special and unique about my home
I thought it so.

I shall suffer none, the least my waking dream
for I do not dream
and I do not wake
only a motionless narrow gate I stare with vivid blindness
it is fuzzy as my eyes blink.
but I do not walk
and I do not run
I am moving as stationary as I can be
I am mute as much as I am noisy

I am noisy as little as I am mute.
I assume no other form than my own
I become no one but a becoming
I tremble, I envy, I stare at my staring
looking at the reflection of my pupils
I see, myself, staring back, myself, an alien to myself

you won't know.
you do not see
you do not have my eyes
you do not have my senses
you do not have my thoughts

heads go softening the faces of age
turning and tilting at angles unrecognizable
I do not know you/you do not know I
but babies or monsters we give birth to
the monstrosity of the unknown
the crying trumpet of the known! I cried with my first sense of this world!
thrown into everything and nothing
where I am both destroyed and created.
no. not me. and not you. We.

there is patience that is taught by the wind.
when it does not announces itself.
It just flow to where the gaps are.
where there can never be vacumns.
there is no such thing as nothingness.

neither everything nor nothing.
I am the dispository of faith
where faith blows like wind
when gaps burst open at every opportunity.
to fill me up with elevating consquence
and I heave, and the wind escapes
and we meet again, in between paradise and hell
and death takes us
where birth has presupposed
I do not know, I need not know, I do not know, because there was everything I knew before I un-knew them

I fear. I repeat. I tremble. I scream
and there is joy in the foreboding reality
killing me softly with words
words that escape the creators of them
words destroyed at the very moment they were spoken.

ah. silence is a virtue that preachers despise unconsciously.
Though, unconscious should not be proud.
There is no unconsciousness without consciousness.
There is no music if there is no wood to vibrate.

words must come when wind fills us up
and the implosion results in an explosion
there is no triumph.
there is no will.
only the evitable response to our will. (and so we imagine one to respond to)
I thought it so.

So shock me.
randomly. to demystify randomness by my expectation of randomness.
but I cannot expect the exact and the definite.
Hence, I am always blind.
Always unknowing. All-knowing that I do not know.

and here it ends.
before I even announced it.
this ended even before it started.

on another note.

--

I don't get you.
and you don't get me too.
so forget it.
you can build your paper robots for all you want in my dreams. I don't give a damn in the waking world.
all i know is that: I lived today to understand yesterday when it is tomorrow
and I will do what I will do tomorrow for the day after to be today

Liebe zu enden

today. 1,000 visitors. who were they?

one of the scariest/strangest things in life is that you move on without you realising.

or is it?

alright. I'm back to the infinite compound space again where the next leap of faith will filter the options down to the inevitable course of my life.
But before that, there is also that inevitable anxiety or dread that comes before every movement.
I am at that stage now. Staring at and being stared back by the universe.

don't understand? don't bother. I don't too. my mind is at a blank and because it is, it is actually filled up. woah.

one of the worst anxieties in life is to be anxious of peace. the more you hope for, the more you are anxious. hence, peace never comes.

just let the wind blow you.

thanks anyway for giving me back the confidence to write.
especially the confidence to write about nothing.

i welcome the coming of the leap day, a reminder that our calenders are lived constructs. Happy birthday to those born on that day. Cool. Why am I not one of them? But I love my birthday too.

hope is an indulgence and a skepticism. faith is not.

i miss blackforest cakes.

where am I?
oh.
Now I get it.

Pain is better defined as being familiar with losing after gaining than losing without any previous possesion. The latter would be no more than a simulation of pain, and that kind of speaks more about the self indulgence than a genuine gaping hole made by ripping a part of you.

Therefore, youth, for all its sweetness and mirth, never understands silences, pain and charity. It just know its gains and excuses itself for its indulgences and simulated lacks.

Age then takes away what youth rightfully gains (that is the nature of youthfulnes), which is an irony. Youth gains age that age may take away what youth has gained. Age gives as much as it takes. That is why it is so beautiful. Vintage wine tastes good because it is not pretentious. It reminds us of both the sweetness of gain (of a youth lost) and the bitterness of loss (of an age gained).

You know it is silent because you once heard music, noise or just those familiar sounds you hear; and now they disappear.

You know pain because you once gained something to know how painful it is to lose it later on.

You know charity because you were once loved to know what love means to the person who receives it.

I love butterflies. For all its ugliness, growing up, metamorphoses, cocoons, beauty and their guises and the withering of the wings as they fall to the ground. The cycle continues. And they are for me the hardest to paint on a canvas.

impressions of life. I love them.

fleeting images last longer if they fleetingly capture your imagination.

so rest easy when the going gets hard.

because there is more to love than the concrete jungle of indulgences out there.

and appreciation goes to where appreciation is due, despite all its delays and belatedness.

and it's always so sweet to know you're missed and have someone to miss.

remember me when I fade and leave a lasting impression.

:)

life is alone. but without that little bit of imagination of the person you miss,
presences remain absences.
make absences lasting presences.

you don't feel alone because you are alone.
you feel alone because there is someone missing who makes you feel alone.

alas, i realise how simple it all is.
to all and myself: remember me knowing that I am already meant to be gone.

I am; a weird mixture of quirky porportions.
and I like it.
:)

most weirdly. I like this compound state. Time to embrace possibilities and infinity. Before they push forward and drown you with the inevitable.

yes. the problem is with choice. and we hopelessly (pun intended) live by them.

I hope I stop hoping.

I am being.
that's better.
convince me. destiny.

the first principle to understand an aspect of life
is to be a butterfly.

there is no one in my room.

there are.

I am increasingly sensing (putting into words) that I am lost. It is to have such a tiny world in my mind that I cannot shrink my world into the bigger one around me (and beyond me). It is to not know what I want and still pretend that I do. It is to feel so spontaneously that actually, I do not like this randomness. I am a control freak only because I cannot control my emotions. Rephrase: I cannot control my emotions so I should be control freak. Ok..both don't work.
But what is more pressing is that this world of mine is so convulated that, though tiny, I cannot find my actual bearings in this world of mine.
World of mine. As if.

Imagine a few of me making sense of this single tiny world and they decide to go different routes to their own self-defined paradise (or hell). There. That's the best I can describe.

so yes. I feel the inertia in me because of this strange world of mine.
Maybe I should just escape to New Jersey and do philosophy of religion.

the wind blows into my room
the wind from the fan blows at me
my room is a still place
where today is yesterday's tomorrow

i read those words from yesterday's yesterday
they don't make sense
they fade
i remember the words today
but i cannot hear those words that were never spoken
they fade

faith makes sense of silence
faith makes the intangibles real
faith makes the words mean more than they should
they fade anyway

(all I want is nightime)
(daytime comes anyway)

i imagine the words for tomorrow's tomorrow
they don't make sense
they fade
i remember the words for tomorrow's yesterday
and still they fade


"There is no living being on earth at this moment except myself. I could walk down the halls, and empty rooms would yawn mockingly at me from every side. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in it's appalling self-consciousness, is horrible and overpowering."
- Sylvia Plath (found on my friend's blog)

ah.
it's a wonder that you always find someone more capable of expressing how you feel at some given moment of lost thoughts. but it is an irony that we are strangers to each other. I'm going in circles.

so much for declarations.

a sudden thought occurred to me...

but smile anyway.

'I' is a formation of many repetitions of 'I's.

Feelings are a formation of many repetitions of feelings.

poor things -
those forgotten narratives, voices, feelings, 'I's, 'you's and the neglected opposites and similitudes.


how many deaths must I die before I know what to do?

candle light

light of my

life

who?

thy gracious patience

my precious contenance

in good old Barthes' way,

die a million deaths
a million painful deaths

but there is always a new egg

of birth

even if hope is an indulgence we often misplaced

of restoration

of new after the old

New

Old

neither nor.


I always believe that we shaped ourselves in relation to the Other before us.

so we all die many deaths before the final physical one.

like candle light flickering and creating shadows on the walls

but burns with such great perseverence in a room of darkness.


transience is what tells me the most about life.

I do not mourn for my many deaths.
because I believe in deaths as much as births.

if I did not,

then my second birth would count for nothing, but a figment of my imagination.

my imagination is meant to be shocked. bubble-like


my heartfelt thanks and gratefulness
to the many deaths 'I' endures,
that i may, with other souls, attend their funerals, and say:

"I am who I am today because of him"

yes.

I am,

Being is always more encouraging than the final death of I-am-as-such.
Being allows us that chance to allow that final liberation and salvation.

Being is Loving.

it is alright.

~ * ~

in loving memory of mr. Lim,
who loved his nemesis till his last breath.
and again.
and again.
again.

a gain.

You give me Joy.

Calvariae

Cuban music is keeping me alive.

Citied from Damien Bau's blog

am i saved? yes ( ) no ( )

am i faithful? yes ( ) no ( )

am i I? yes ( ) no ( )

is this my body? yes ( ) no ( )

is this my mind? yes ( ) no ( )

is this my writing? yes ( ) no ( )

are you reading? yes ( ) no ( )

The 'I' which approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite , or more precisely, lost.

Roland Barthes, S/Z, 1970

infinite (my emphasis)

really?
perhaps.

but I am first thrown into a world I had no choice over.

why here? why male? why this body? why 1982? why an island? why my name?

but I am persuaded that I am free to choose.

wealth, health, CPF, love, faith, religion, education, work, death and Lim Chu Kang...

the choices seem infinite. but the path is inevitably as it will be.

I am born alone.
I live alone.
I breathe alone.
I sleep alone.
I dream alone.
I confess alone.
I die alone.

I obliterate my choices as a choice is made (freely or by external forces)
so unless one should turn their backs against everyone and everything in this world,
then the loneliness is a misery.

our first choice should be for the finite Self in relation to the infinite Other.

'I' is plural.
but it is not infinite.

yello w as there a treetopof the home

i

use d own the treehome far t he was tin g one

ONE

one time r est the pain ful ly not under

STOOD

I

strange r

w e a T H E r

strange r

do or die situate on do not feel ing yester day

HERE

no mean
thing to mean

me
living

in the thickness
of

rest in

peace
ful
home

love

comes
far

home
dread
ful
l

o

v






e

w

O

r

d
s




fa

l
l

a pa rt

verily i say unto myself, all is vanity! the more i know, the more I know nothing.

i shall stop writing for a while.