Frequent Flyer

Would you help me pack my bags I might be leaving
I need some sweet assistance while I'm stealing
Some of your time
I hope that's fine

And I've got photographs of all, you're all I'm needing
Forgiveness if I left you all believing
That I'm the one, 'cause I feel like none
And I need something to direct me to it

'Cause I'm a frequent flyer, a notorious liar
But I can't get close enough
I never get close
I can't get close enough

I would love to tell my story from the ending
But the story's getting thin from heavy spending
And I need a man, and I need my fence
And I need someone to protect me from the wrench

'Cause I'm a frequent flyer, a notorious liar
But I can't get close enough
I never get close
I can't get close enough

I can't get close enough
I can't get close enough
To the sun
I can't get close enough

'Cause I'm a frequent flyer, a notorious liar
But I can't get close enough
I never get close
I can't get close enough... it seems

Recipe for maintaining purity - manifesto of the ultimate Virgo!

1. Open your heart and see your own weaknesses - face the beast.

2. Rationalize to eventually conclude that it's not really your own fault. It's nobody's fault. Nobody's to blame. You're just born that way or have come that way for a reason. It's not your fault.

3. Make sure you've really cleared up those "reasons" proper. No turning back unless you're sure that nostalgia is absolutely harmless, ie, usually when you are well into the next step.

4. From this moment on, every decision you make shouldn't lead you further down the path of weakness. It should lead you down the path to your own betterment.

5. REMEMBER stuff that happened on that path. Remember where you came from and the sights you saw.

6. Beware of imitation and incorporation of external elements of influence. If you're influenced by your own choice, all's fine (Ref #3. You are down the right path). If you're inadvertently influenced and you realise it shakes you, then (try to) make sure it's due to the same reasons that "made you this way" (Ref #2). It sounds hard to do but it's usually the case already.

If you don't know what I'm talking about or think I'm crazy that's fine. I won't be bothered and that's an improvement.

I realised that I'm not capable of advocating for getting emotional

I realised that I'm not capable of advocating for getting emotional.

Who are you kidding? You are a high F man!

No I'm not kidding. I have, repeat, realised that I don't advocate for getting emotional.

I'm a fan of pure emotions. Sadness, anger, joy. These are sublime. Beautiful. Eternal. But they have to be hidden. They have to remain as a picture of tears flowing down without change of expression, or saying goodbye with nothing but a pale hand gesture, or eyes secretly sparkling, lips bitten down and hearing the world sing only in your ears. The silence and the invariance of the expression are very important. The undercurrent is the key.

I've learnt to express the emotions in a smart way. I could reason, rationalize, compare, invoke history and psychology and philosophy, do everything to show it's alright to break down or be childishly exhilirated. Or better - I might do something to let others feel the depth of my emotions without parading them. That's hard though.

How have I gotten so? Has the world been such a cruel audience to me that I've joint their ranks? If so I'm not going to complain either. But I'd rather think of it as the result of mum-related disdainment.

Some thoughts

Some thoughts were floating up to the surface of my muddled mind as I played erhu. Once I stopped playing and endeavoured to put them down into coherent sentences they evaporated, like some ghostly face in horror movies that always show up with a particular reprise of music.

Here are some vague conjectures that I could make out (I ought to be writing my term paper now! Stop this! Ok ok. Just for this while. Stop! Ok! Shut up!).

Confidence vs vanity
Silence vs storm
Beauty queens vs ugly duckling girls
Purity vs protection
Fuller lab vs Bao lab

This really reminds me of the list-making exercise for a reflective essay writing class I took in my last semester in Cornell. How I miss the winter!

One makes a compromise when she decides to bury proper a chunk of her past. This ought to be the best definition of compromise I could figure out so far. And this notion is related to a stage of growth and the discard of an amount of innocence. Therefore, letting go of a story in the past = growing up = gaining certain knowledge and experience of the world = losing some innocence = making a compromise.

It's interesting how everything in life has turned up in two-facetted fashion. I have the winter personality but it's evaporating under the Californian sun. I hope I could make peace with the resulting ghostly mist, lest it comes back to haunt me.

At Seventeen

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth...

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say "come dance with me"
And murmured vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems at seventeen...

A brown eyed girl in hand me downs
Whose name I never could pronounce
Said: "Pity please the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve"
The rich relationed hometown queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company
And haven for the elderly...

So remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debitures of quality and dubious integrity
Their small-town eyes will gape at you
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen...

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
the world was younger than today
when dreams were all they gave for free
to ugly duckling girls like me...

We all play the game, and when we dare
We cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say: "Come on, dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen...

A song that I used to know by heart, not that I understood or emphasized totally with what it was saying - I was too ignorant to even dare to think how poignant and relevant it might have been - but just that seventeen has been an age when I learnt songs by heart.

封神榜

Once again I've found back a bit of my past in the form of a TV show (c.f. Saint Seiya less than a year ago). As I double-clicked on episode #1 and waited for my long-suffering Real Player that took eternity to start, every single scene and face during the opening theme (and of course, the opening theme) came up to me, as vivid as if I'm settling down to a usual routine of TV. It eventually started. It was not exactly as what I had imagined. It never will be for such re-enactments. The faces were more blurry (due to the quality of the video), the actions looked more unnatural, the makeup more 80-ish, and a Taiwanese accent, unnoticed before, permeated the song.

Perhaps it is really the TV and nothing else that moulds the memory of every child. Perhaps if I had watched more TV in Singapore I would have liked the place very much. But since TV-less maturation has always been the definitive experience of my growing-up, I'm just gonna hold on to it.

No amount of planning

No amount of planning is sufficient to prevent a quarter from ending in a nerve-wrecking frenzy. I know life isn't a bed of roses and all that. Trouble still is whether I should resist planning and growing up (van with Hello Kitty passed by on Angell Court). Is it better to take alternating periods of thorough contentment and nerve-wrecking frenzy? How could that be in anyway attractive?