gratefulness...

Elvis Perkins on repeat. Big scarf and big jumper. Lots of thoughts of you, my friend.

pro patria, non dulce non et decor

This has been on my mind a lot lately for some reason. Especially the lines 'home to old lies and new infamy' and 'liars in public places.' Sometimes my mind gets stuck on an idea or a line or word like a broken record, popping up at random moments...

IV.

THESE fought, in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case . Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later . . .

some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some "pro patria, non dulce non et decor". .

walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;
fortitude as never before

frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.

- Pound, 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'

Home

cry

哭

This time of year...

I find myself thinking more and more of my friends. Not facebook friends or circumstantial friends (not that there's anything wrong with those) but friends I would trek miles to see, if only I could.

midweek

listening to OK Computer & fantasizing about staring long and deep into the heart of a bloom. looking forward to going home and beating myself up constructively, feeling for those muscles and sinews that don't normally make themselves felt at a desk job.

Geek Love

My lil' bro has three clocks on his dashboard. One of them is Taiwan. This takes Geek Love to a whole new level. Woot.

I walked past a house where I lived once

I walked past a house where I lived once:
a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
Many years have passed with the quiet hum
of the staircase bulb going on
and off and on again.

The keyholes are like little wounds
where all the blood seeped out. And inside,
people pale as death.

I want to stand once again as I did
holding my first love all night long in the doorway.
When we left at dawn, the house
began to fall apart and since then the city and since then
the whole world.

I want to be filled with longing again
till dark burn marks show on my skin.

I want to be written again
in the Book of Life, to be written every single day
till the writing hand hurts.

-Yehuda Amichai

[via We convince by our presence]

domestic

at home. bare feet. no glasses. old cashmere jumper. getting soup on the hob. you're someone I'd like to keep warm with.

I just wanted to tell you...

that to be good for yourself should be sufficient reason.

From this morning...

重看陳雪的「惡女書」。Stood up from the kitchen table exclaiming: 'Good book!! SO good!'
Good morning, world. It's 7:52 am. I like explicit lesbian fiction with my porridge.

吊水桶

To me, Chinese is unparalleled in its ability to describe a certain state of mind: 七上八下，患得患失。焦慮。騷動。不安。They feel quite far away right now, looking at it from without. In my mind's eye I am standing on a pin-prick of a desert island on a sunny day, watching a storm that has just passed. No one would know that it had been and gone save for the lot of trash & broken bits washed up on shore. Some sure signs during: talking to myself in the office (to the bewilderment of my colleagues) and writing indecipherable notes to myself in various forms of social media (including the blog).

I am prone to fits of anxiety, though it is hard for the calm and sober side of me to believe it.

On good days I feel like this:

Except I begin to wonder whether it is from the peasant or from Icarus's point of view. Whatever the case, the day he fell was (indisputably) one fine day.

Quite often though, it's more like:

These are not so good.

When I think of myself in pictorial (or mathematical?) terms, I often see the fluctuations of a Sine wave, and myself, standing atop one of the peaks, desperately attempting to flatten it out, even just a little (because too much of this roller-coaster is really not altogether desirable). Though I'm reluctant to think of myself (like my grandmother does) as a character in a melodrama, full of emotional highs and lows, I still have to concede that right alongside my apparent cheerfulness and rationality, there seems to be a vast quantity of total battiness as well.

The state I most enjoy is that of The House was Quiet and the World was Calm, or Frost at Midnight. But the pitching and tossing - is that also me? More importantly, do I want it to be? Do I have a choice? It does, in any event, make me feel that some very powerful organ is not my own.

So I'm setting myself some seemingly dull and mundane tasks: think positively, and if I can help it, don't think too much at all. But it's all easier said than done.

And it still leaves a lot of open questions - like where do all the unnamed things go?

#2: here's an idea

the trick is to beat oneself up constructively.

#2 forever

tries to minimize the random in her life only to realize that she is the source of most of the randomness. Could just as easily swap 'random' for 'drama' and the statement remains true. fuck.

#2 yet again

Could become a sickness of self-obsession. 糾結不清。
Is fearful of needs and dependencies and the things that she can't stop thinking.

#2 and then some...

On the roller-coaster again. Walt Whitman always restores a modicum of calm.

Safe Travels

It's been nice having you here.

There's so much more to explore. Come back soon!

#2

...might be a tree falling in the forest, though not sure why.

odds & ends

My worst nightmare is to not be able to sleep, or not be able to sleep well.

I like poems about sleep, like Auden's 'Lullaby'.

I don't like team sports because I can't handle the pressure of not letting my team-mates down. Once I rowed for the mighty Kebelles and it really put my ability to be part of a team to the test. I'm glad I did it.

When I was a teenager in Toronto I went to a Catholic high school. It was (overall) a positive experience, despite my agnosticism. I still have my uniform and wear it on occasion (sometimes for parties or my birthday). I'm glad I still fit into it.

In life-drawing classes I enjoy drawing female models more than male models. I like the nape of the neck and tend to enlarge and over-exaggerate bottoms because I love the way they look.

I like pleats of fabric and the fragility of old things.

I worry about doing the right things. I'm very concerned about staying consistent to my own principles.

I enjoy conversations before sleep and languid mornings in bed. I prefer a bed that smells like the person who sleeps in it to a bed that is freshly made.

One thing that's been on my mind is how to (proactively) become the person I want to be. I am trying to discover what I like and don't like about myself, and for the dislikes, what I can and can't change. If I can change, I'll try. If I can't change, I'll try to make peace with that.

I am fortunate in that I enjoy the intimate friendship of my many (minor) vices, to the point that I am not even sure they are vices as such.

Patience is a big problem right now. I pray to God to grant me forbearance but until he does I pray to him to grant me a superabundance of obscenities, which he has been generous enough to provide.

So at the end of the day there are many things for which to be thankful.