so, i found myself on youtube again

How long ago was this?!



"No no no I hate this game, don't take photo..."

"Oh no 5 seconds more"

"Ahh!!"

"Go go go go go go!"

"It was just there it was just there!!"

whuddathunkit

Many coffee calls were what it took.

There is a high chance I am making an erroneous calculation here but I believe it was two days/nights ago when I developed a sudden over-enthusiasm for school work. Others see this as a result of my manifest shortage of any time management skills whatsoever. I, Fragile Hearted Critic of This Most Derogatry View, would rather consider myself having a sudden bout of devotion to the world of academia. (Although I really suppose I must agree with my detractors this time.)

What are Sundays meant for? Religious zealots will tell you: praying on your prayer rug while studying the doctrinal laws of your religion and performing a handstand and binding your feet at the same time. The Familyman Yonder will tell you: booking a CityCab to Toys-R-Us for your impish child while your wanton mistress from Mongolia awaits you and your wallet with great enthusiasm in the inconspicuous budget hotel by the wayside. The juvenile delinquents will tell you: exploiting the unmentionable "9 days of free play" while plotting your next criminal adventure and evading police action. I will tell you: sleeping.

What did I do on Sunday? None of the above. I tumbled out of bed to get my hair washed, climbed into the backseat of the car while my laptop and huge (relative to me but not to you) backpack trampled themselves on my unwilling person, rushed through a bowl of noodles, boarded a West-bound train for School Land, and then took my first and last breath of the day. Shockingly enough, it looked like a normal school day - students from China breezing through their lecture notes. I ran in the library so I'd have enough time to borrow books, picked 6 heavy books, borrowed them, went to the canteen to plan my paper. This took 11 hours.

I sat with a stranger just for some semblance of company, walked in the rain to Jackie's room, struggled to open her bedroom door, and got back to drafting my paper. Had dinner with a kind soul, made a coffee run, came back. Soon it was Monday, my eyes were disobeying, as were my hands and fingers and brain. More coffee runs and toilet runs and several cold showers to stay awake. I even cried out of sheer frustration-at-self and exhaustion [insert appropriate and well deserved crybaby taunts here] but put on my chirpy Pizza Hut girl voice for my wake-up caller (who said "well, Jac, I hope this is a lesson for you" to my unwilling ears and made me want to kick things about and kill the self) and exactly 20 hours from the time I began, I was done.


allaroundbackgroundsound: Everybody Knows This is Nowhere - Alec Ounsworth; Proposition 61 - The Most Serene Republic

Can you see the beauty inside of me?
What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?

And I miss you when you're not around
I'm getting ready to leave the ground

Oh you look so beautiful tonight
In the city of blinding lights

Time...time...time...time...time
Won't leave me as I am

dance

For one night only.

the answer is

This mish-mash world of Facebook - a juxtaposition of junkies and noobs, of old people and young ducklings, of the perverted and the innocent, of the sex offenders and the nymphomaniacs, of the beautiful ad the ugly. And I sing to myself, what a wonderful world?

Sometimes one sifts through one's inbox and finds a message that is pleasant, pleasing, pleasurable. There is a feeling of wanting to delve in and explore, find out this mystery, confirm that this is not an enigma as much as an enigma is. One feels empowered, slightly taken aback (in a good way) and surprised. And then one replies.

And then there are the times a message seems verging on being offensive, coming on too strong. A message that makes you back off rather than follow through, squirm rather than sigh. A message like this:


Hi

I am new here
Pleased to meet u
Kindly introduce ourselves then

I am 25 single male
mix race
medium built
slightly tanned
friendly honest nice person


Please intro too

Kindyly contact me


We don't want to make ourselves snobs, as long as we can help it. We want to be that friendly person, willing to say hi, how are you? without feeling obliged. And we can and we do. But sometimes, something like this makes you wonder.

The answer is: No.

ladies, be warned

Don't just "jagar" your panty; jagar your heart too. Later, you kena stranded in the middle of somehwere, think back to this day, man. Think back to the wahlao, the basket, the wahpiang. Think back and say "oohhhh now I know". Tio boh?

memorise

My driving sucks today. Well, no. Correction, darling. My driving was great today. My parking sucked so bad it sucked the life out of the whole of the East and put it in a concentrated bubble and blew it out into the universe only to have it fall back and that is why, everyone, the East is the way it is. I will not go into specificities lest I start an Address War as we are quite prone and inclined to, no matter where we are, what time it is or what we are doing.

I thought I would blog endless roaming thoughts because I have nothing else to do. People fear for my life, that tonight I will end up gang-raped by the five-foot-ways and drunk dialling all the people in my address book who have names starting with O. (I'm sneaky because if you pull a jealous-boyfriend on me and check my phonebook, you'd realise I don't have anyone whose name starts with an O. Especially now that Old Macdonald and I are no longer on speaking terms when I told him, "Well, no. Fish don't really make any sounds." He is a sensitive new age guy, what can I say.)

If you haven't heard the story about how I am a supposed stalker on campus then, boy, are you missing out on my very exoticised, controversial, TV drama life. Apparently (because it is a fact unknown to me) I have been stalking this boy/man/guy in school because really that is how I generally spend my time. The answer is no. In order to clear my name I needed the help of a dictionary. Thank you, Great Dick Shenary. You have saved my life and heinous-enough reputation but saying "This is what it means to stalk." and asking, "Does Jac do that to you?" Answer is no. I think this is why it always helps to speak the same language. Maybe stalk in [insert European language here] means something flattering. Stalker? Who me?

No drunk-dialling, let's seal the deal.

allaroundbackgroundsound: Make Out Song - The Rosebuds

chin mee chin

There is a box of chin mee chin's custard puffs on my kitchen countertop. I don't know how they got there but it tugs at my heart in more ways than one. Part the past, part the present. I declined my mother's offer to have one. I figure, I can do without some chin mee chin today.

I know everyone cares. I love them/you for it. But I guess I just want to be alone.

do you read this?

The things I wish I could say amount to a figure so high. The feelings that I feel are all that tripled. Evening came today and brought with it a torrential outpour of things remembered, things I thought I had forgotten. It was one day where I hated Evening. I wished she were palpable, tangible, so then I may take a sharp object and lunge it towards her like a javelin pro that I am (not).

Not everyone knows what I am doing. I know there are those who will feel or do feel like I am keeping them out of the loop, excluding them in the formation of my secret elitist/occult group. Untrue. I know there are those who think I am just tripping and planning to take other people down with me. Untrue. It's a journey few people know about, unless I have had the liberty to share (not always). And it's hard.

I hope there will come a day when things will come to light. I hope there will be a moment of epiphany when you see that my yes really meant yes and my no really meant no; that I wasn't out to get revenge for what was done to me; that I wasn't who you said I was. But until then, there is so little I can do.

Like I said, my heart...it just hurts.

my heart hurts

"Don't forget how it was broken."
You're not the only one.

the wild one

Sometimes I think it's really in me. I'm thankful my professor isn't throwing Darwin's Origin of Species in my face (though it would have helped if she didn't throw George freakin' Eliot at me - everyone knows how much I abhor Eliot) but I think it's really in me. Sometimes I want to drop everything and go wild. Let loose like a native in a novel country and simulate for a moment so fleeting that nothing else exists.

Sometimes I think it's really in me: a power to will this all away. A power to close my eyes and find that when I open them again the world is exactly as it should be - the way I think it should be, ought to be, could be but wouldn't be.

The part in life where everyone tells you everything will be fine?
What you really want to do is kick a chair in their general direction and ask them to shut up.

How does a memory fade? Apparently - I learn a lot from my professor - the more you remember something, the more the memory is altered, and by your own mind. Gradually I forget what day it was, what dress I wore, where we went, what was said, how it happened, why it happened, what I felt, what I thought, what I said, how loud I laughed.

How do I be alone.

spring comes slowly
to this old friend
still i'm frozen
and still live alone
in time
memories fade
senses numb
one forgets how it feels
to have loved completely
love well young man
while you still can
once your leaves turn
you won't love again

Anyway, I am going to get back to researching the Dionysian. Meanwhile, do this!clickit And leave a comment if you would like me to fill in yours.

(i'm supposed to be studying)

From my lecture notes:

"...The Mirror and the Lamp, tells the story of a dinner party at which Keats proposed the toast ‘Confusion to the memory of Newton’ and explained his grudge against Newton thus: ‘Because he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism.’"

I want to propose a toast to Keats.

my set

I'm one of those people that empties the Bulk folder in my email account without even opening it. Yes, at moments I ask myself, "What if there was something really important in there? What if someone left me a grand inheritance? What if I really was the 1,000,000th visitor to a gambling site and won a million dollars? What if I can really enlarge my penis?" But it's one of those things where my philosophy is: Don't look, don't think, just do.

I'm not even sure why I am talking about this. It was just a sudden epiphanic hour. I saw I had 136 unread messages in the bulk folder. And, as always, I clicked "empty", hardly giving a thought to how I flippantly refused to regard my bulk folder as something to be revered. (It is not.) I wonder if it says anything about me. Who I am. What would you say to someone who said: "Yo dawg so I was like trippin' about Yahoo! and like totally represented, know what I'm sayin'? Deleted the bulk emails, yo. Gone, yo. Like, in a flash! Gone!" I'd probably think "lazy arse".

No, this post has little significant importance. It's not even a rumination of life. It's not even an analogical weapon of mass destruction to help me rule the blog universe. (I'm not sure I want to be Xiaxue II anyway.) (I talk in parentheses often enough.) (I'm proud of the moment when Mr Lyon asked what the plural of parenthesis was and I shot my arm up like a party popper [popper, not pooper] on steroids and said "parentheses!!!!") (More yelled than said but who is keeping count?) (I stop.)

In fact. What I wanted to accomplish (I think highly of this little alcove and "accomplish" is a more flattering word than "do") was to create a playlist, which as of yet has not been propelled into existence. I will now open iTunes. As many a wise sea anemone has said, "BRB."

DJ Jackoreen in the house and this is what she's spinnin':

Diana Ross - The Concretes
My Sharona - The Ramones
Disco Sheets - Wolf Parade
What Else is There - Röyksopp
On the Table - A.C. Newman
Come Out and Play - The Offspring
Teenage Kicks - Nouvelle Vague
Postage Stamp World - Rogue Wave
Ruby Blue - Roisin Murphy
Rebel, rebel - David Bowie
Middle of Nowhere - Hot Hot Heat
L'amour á 3 - Stereo Total
Love Punch - The Chalets
Kiss - Prince
List of demands - Saul Williams

I don't know how to explain this feeling, this desire of mine. I really want to be at a rave party now. I want to wear purple leggings and clutch onto lightsticks for dear life and dance all night and get high on energy and music and come home feeling like my feet are aching but it was all worth it.

Or a gig.

This fire is out of control
I'm going to burn this city
Burn this city
If this fire is out of control
Then i
I'm out of control
And i burn

Since I have to face myself in this season, I may as well stop trying to run away. I need help to lock all the doors and exit points though. I know I am likely to look out and want to jump. I know I am likely to forget about space and time and all the "trivial" mundanities like oh, school and oh, people and oh, such and such and such and such. Even right now, let me be honest: I don't feel the least bit like carrying on this journey. It simply is way too hard. I want to make the mistakes and I don't care anymore.

But I have to keep telling myself, this is not my journey to make. And, hey, Jacqueline Chan, attention! attention! it's already been made. Someone has gone before me and I already have a map. I have what I need. I can go, I can walk and climb and swim and run and crawl and cycle and dance and hop and leap and skip and roll. So why does it matter so much if I want to fly? I have more than enough options.

And if someone is going to knock me on the head and tell me I can't do it, I am going to knock that person back and say, "Shut up and sit down." How long more can I avoid being alone? How long more can I avoid a rainy day moment when my toes are soaked in puddles and my dress is dripping and my heart is beating but it doesn't know what for? How long more can I hold my breath underwater and wonder what happens if I don't come up for air? How long more can I think of dying and look at a poem and stare at its words while my mind is a train on a track that's built to go on forever and ever into nothingness? How long more can I skip tracks on my iPod until eventually I reach the last song and have listened to, essentially, nothing because I've become afraid of music and what it tells me?

I'm tired of people. I'm sick of humpty dumpties who try to tell me who I am. I'm this, I'm that. I'm pretty, I'm intelligent, I'm indecisive, I'm dishonest, I'm talented, I'm beautiful, I'm unique, I'm arrogant, I'm lazy, I'm rebellious, I'm stylish, I'm rude, I'm hard-hearted, I'm stubborn, I'm elegant, I'm funny, I'm uncaring, I'm proud, I'm puzzling, I'm difficult, I'm outgoing, I'm enigmatic, I'm trouble, I'm heartbreaking, I'm Jacqueline.

Ladies and gentlemen, who cares?

I don't want to know what you think I am. I want to see it myself. I want to understand myself.

If I have to scream at God, I will. If I have to cry to God, I am going to. If have to say I'm sorry, Lord multiple multiple times, I will. If I have to take a big rock and somehow find a way to hurl it up at God I will (and then I'll pray that gravity will cease to exist and the rock will stay up in the air as long as it's not me standing below it). And if in this process, I am left alone, then that's okay. If in all this, people walk away, then that's okay. Cause there is Someone bigger and better than everything big and bet (it doesn't make sense but shut up!) combined.

THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. If you'd like to be my cheerleader, sign up. There aren't even any auditions.

God,

This fire? It burns. It really really really really burns.

time for my psychoanalysis

OUCH.

If I were someone else, I'd like to get drunk right about now. I'd get high on something, anything. If I were some place else, I'd stay there forever and never come back here. If I were something else, I'd be so much better than this.

Because. That is what you say. That is what you want to say. You want to tell me I am scum of the earth. So say it. You want to tell me I am the worst thing that ever happened to you. So say it. You want to tell me you hate me. So say it. You want to tell me you wish you'd never met me. So say it. You want to tell me you wish I were dead. So say it. You want to tell me I don't deserve you, or anyone at all. So say it. You want to tell me to go away. So say it. You want to tell me I'm the bane of your existence.

Just say it, get it over with. I get it.

But guess what?

If I want to get advice from someone, anyone, it wouldn't be you. For sure. Not you.