" height="40" playcount="2"/>
Friday, June 29, 2012
I love you.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 10.57pm*~~~
Thursday, June 28, 2012
"The key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared meanings. There is something in his life experience that makes him take in the world as a problem; as a result he has to make personal sense out of it. This holds true for all creative people to a greater or lesser extent, but it is especially obvious with the artist. Existence becomes a problem that needs an ideal answer; but when you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own. The work of art is, then, the ideal answer of the creative type to the external world, but especially his own: who he is as a painfully separate person with nothing shared to lean on. He has to answer to the burden of his extreme individuation, his so painful isolation. He wants to know how to earn immortality as a result of his own unique gifts. His creative work is at the same time the expression of his heroism and the justification of it. It is his 'private religion' - as Rank put it. Its uniqueness gives him personal immortality; it is his own 'beyond' and not that of others."
- The Denial of Death (The Creative Solution)
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 2.58pm*~~~
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Man, this is probably the happiest I've ever been in my life so far. After so many years...sixteen years of dreaming and hoping and searching and aimless wandering...the loneliness is finally gone. It feels almost surreal to think about how far we've come since the start of the year; all the things we've gone through, all the pain and hurt and hope and desire...in the end, unlike with so many other things in this world around us, it was worth all the struggle and the wait. There's nothing to regret at all.
For once, I don't feel such a desperate need to express myself through words anymore.
Just let the wind pick up from here, wherever it's gonna take us. It's alright now.
We'll be fine, I know we will.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 2.40pm*~~~
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Gosh I had another dream just now during my nap and a lot of crazy shit happened, so I'm just gonna record everything while it's still fresh in my mind.
First things first, I had another OOBE incident just that this time round when I left, I somehow managed to sit through all the strange pressures, which usually got so uncomfortable for me that I would jerk awake during the process, and remain fully conscious right to the point where I could leave. The symptoms were a little different this time round in the sense that it wasn't so much of tingling or vibration as pressure, applied in waves as if someone was rolling something heavy over my torso, and there was a ringing sound (might be interesting to note that since yesterday night there has been a persistent louder than usual ringing in my ears) accompanied by loud whooshing noises as if I were on the seashore listening to the waves right beside my head. These noises were pretty much synchronised with the pressure. The weird thing was, unlike most of my previous experiences, when I was out I couldn't see much at all; the impression I got was just darkness and a kind of grayish zone where my body didn't appear to be composed of a light-like substance, but was rather a shadowy silhouette that seemed bereft of almost all colors while retaining extremely low density and weightlessness. I also couldn't seem to right myself - my head felt as if it was "stuck" and I was left dangling by my feet again for a good few seconds. I remember seeing my blanket even though I didn't open my eyes in real life...but it was the same as everything else: grayish, desaturated, dark and colorless.
And then there was one rather frightening part where I felt as if someone had wrapped his hand around my throat and was strangling or suffocating me. In my mind's eye I really had the impression of a shadowy arm and hand and it felt as if I couldn't breathe for a quite a while. It didn't help that, while I was conscious, I was stuck in a half sleep paralysis state that made it extremely difficult to move my limbs at will. So yeah, that was something really quite strange - in a morbidly fascinating way - and frightening. Can't say this was the best OOBE yet, though some of the changes were rather interesting, like the different symptoms and the state of consciousness as well as the plane I was in during the experience...the grayish zone kind of reminded me of another dead plane I once entered for a few seconds at night, where everything was dark except for a bluish light that filtered through the windows and it was raining like nuts (though when I checked the next morning the ground was completely dry and it never did rain)...as if nothing was alive on the plane except for me. Sigh. I'd like to find the answers to all these questions I'm getting.
Right. So after that OOBE I went into normal dreamscape and this time I dreamt that it was war and I was pretty much the only female member of my section. It was actually a really nice place with a large pool and gardens full of lush greenery and flowers and all, and I had the impression that the battlefield was not very far away from where the contingent was stationed to wait, though I never really got to catch a glimpse of it. The illogical thing was that everyone had to go out to war in "sections", almost as if there was a time limit for each, somewhere around thirty minutes, and whoever survived would return and wait for another round. My section was supposed to be one of the last few to go, though for some strange reason we never did reach the battlefield in the end. I just remember watching the friends I had made and treasured (yes, some of them were my real life buddies) in other sections move out to meet their uncertain fates, and wishing very badly that everything could just end that very moment, that there didn't have to be war, that these people I loved could come back safe and sound and we could enjoy life together as if nothing ever happened. It was difficult to reconcile that scenic and picturesque place with the ghastly reality of death and destruction occurring just a short distance away from it. It's just too morbid a prospect to entertain, and in the face of an unpromising fate, everything beautiful about the place - and subsequently life - imposed upon me in an unbearably disconcerting and haunting manner.
During the wait, for some reason we were allowed to go off on our own and do our own stuff, so I occupied myself with small things around the place. I found terrapins in the pond, played with a particularly large one, ran up and down the little knolls full of rain-slicked grass, fooled around the flower bushes and muddy ponds and rushed down the long dim-lit corridors opening the doors to my friends' rooms (it was almost like a hotel, just not). Oh on a side note I found Jonat and Yue lying on their stomachs on the top of a hill drawing, which absolutely didn't make any fucking sense in both the dream and reality; in reality because nothing like that would happen during wartime, and in the dream because the thought of snipers came to my mind and I thought they were being freaking stupid lying in clear view of the enemy quarters. So I crawled up the hill while lying low to the ground and hissed at them to lie down and move back down the hill. I remember Jonat was being nonchalant and saying something like "there're no snipers", though he got disproved like a couple of seconds later when a sniper rifle shot rang out in the distance. Nobody on our side died, though, at least not the two who were beside me at that point in time. We made it safely down the hill back to our base.
In those moments I almost lost myself in all the fun I was having, but near the end of the dream, my section leader suddenly announced that we were next to move out. I just recall the feeling of extreme distress and a familiar overwhelming desire to just turn tail and run, but I couldn't, because there was just no way out of it. I remember seeing one of my most cherished friends returning from his round at that point in time, alive and mostly unscathed, and how I almost doubled over from the revolting mixture of joy at his safe return and the horrible dread of my own pressing fate that churned in my stomach.
As I moved down the line with my platoon mates, I told him I didn't want to go. He was passing by me so he just told me in a few brief words to go, to take it as a "test", and the glance he cast me...well, how can I describe it? It was inexplicably chilling at that point in time. I don't know why. It was most probably because I wasn't expecting that sort of detachment he exhibited, as if the reality of managing to stay alive was so massive a feat that, for a good while, nothing would be on his mind save for a numbing weariness accentuated by a subconscious but desperate appreciation of life, after having been so close to losing it. I knew then that the significance of my life would have appeared diminished compared to the pulsating reality of his own. He wouldn't have cared about me. He couldn't have even if, in normal situations, he would have had anyway.
The fervent praying...the irrationality that comes with the exhibition of the most primal and animalistic aspects of human nature...the desperation as you wish constantly for luck to be with you the next second...we knew, we all knew that luck was the only thing we could dump all our hopes on in the battlefield. This total surrender of control over to such an indefinite and fickle thing as luck reduces all of us into the most basic and wretched form of human existence - living in the present and only in the present, where every instinct is sharpened and focused upon what is happening at the moment, and reason is blocked out by the endless rush of adrenaline, desperation, intense hope and dread that brings together the extreme polarities of human nature into one colossal mesh of insanity. In the worst moments, we would not be able to bring ourselves to care for our friends. To some degree we might even wish that death could deliver its blow to the person next to us and not ourselves. We could count on no one, and we all knew it. This knowledge broke minds.
At some level, it probably did something horrible to his. I understood. I could empathise. I felt happy for him, for the fact that luck had been on his side and he had made it through. And yet it hurt all the same.
After all, who could guarantee that we'd ever meet again? Does it not matter to you?
What would happen when you realised, but too late?
***
~~~Waited for the Winds at 5.37pm*~~~
I had a horrible dream yesterday night, in which I clearly remember I flunked a literature CT paper, and it took me quite a while when I woke up to realise that it didn't actually happen in real life. While I did the paper as fast as possible, somehow my time management got extremely screwed up and by the time we had to put our pens down, I still had about three quarters of the normal paper unfinished, not to mention an extra RAlit paper attached at the back for me (even though there's no RAlit in RJ). Everyone else seemed to find the time limit perfectly fine, something I couldn't comprehend at all because I really tried my fucking best and failed. The paper wasn't even hard. There was just so much to do, too much to complete in too little time.
I miss RAlit with Ms Leow. Those two years offered me perhaps the best Lit experience so far, where a teacher's genuine passion could ignite the enthusiasm of the whole class and we would embark upon little journeys back and forth between the realms of reality and imagination. We questioned and answered, delved deep into things, pulled apart the veils and picked up all the nuances along the road, watching the scenes come alive in the mind's eye. We would solidify the spectres of meaning that impregnated words from a long time ago, words from a hand that no longer exists, and find such awe and wonder in the sensitivity and fragility of the written word which, in the interim, houses so much expressive power in its potential for both creation and destruction. If I recall correctly, RAlit was the one class in the entire level that did the least work in terms of academic assignments and dreary essay-writing. Ms Leow never did see much point in forcing us to practise for exams or adhere to the standard essay styles and structures. We attended lessons to have fun, meaningful fun, and in that way we could learn so much more at our own volition. Sometimes we would write poetry too, and hear voices we would never have imagined could come from one another's mouths. Everything was about discovery and creation, not filling in the blanks with the right words and getting the ideal marks (to be honest, I think almost everyone in RAlit has flunked at least one lit exam before). That's why I loved it.
Man, it's so different now, you know? The lecture theatre makes everything so impersonal all of a sudden; there's nothing between you and the text except for the cold white glow of the projector screen and the droning voice of a teacher whose sense of obligation overrides the desire to discover and inspire. I still do my best for it, of course, because Lit is really the second subject I love most after Art, and so far for both assignments I've gotten an A grade and had one typed out and disseminated to the level, which hasn't happened in quite a while. Yet this troubles me more than ever because I didn't want to and most definitely didn't plan to give my teacher such a good impression so early in the year. It means pressure. It means standards. It means expectations. It means all the things that would force me to work and score well but which I do not want to deal with if I could avoid them, and I cannot fail, because there's no excuse anymore for fumbling and coming up with strange interpretations for things and having fun the way we used to in RAlit. I'm no longer a child...I can't play anymore.
Sigh. Stupid existential crisis yesterday. I haven't had such a depressing one in a few months, and I don't have a clue - well maybe I do but ugh - about what triggered it. I must put those days behind me, pick myself up from where I had fallen...and get back on track soon.
***
~~~*Waited for the Winds at 11.01am*~~~
I want to live,
I want to die.
I want to run.
I want to escape.
I want to forget.
I want to sleep.
I want to go home.
I want to stop, stop it all.
There are so many things I want to say but I don't know how to. It's all that's on my mind now. I'm tired, so fucking tired, stuck in a rut with no energy and motivation to push myself forward. Can't fucking concentrate, can't do things right, can't stop myself from wishing so badly to just whip around and run away from all this insanity. Man, what good am I? I just want to become nothing, become insignificant...what's the point of existing if it means that I'll have to deal with all these questions and desires and regrets and existential anxiety almost every few minutes of my life? Why must I be here? Why must there even be a "me"? Why am I even thinking about all this shit when it's just causing me more and more unnecessary distress in my life?
God, I can't even type coherently now, much less consider things rationally as I should be doing. I'm exhausted. Since when did life suddenly become so absolutely fucking tiring? Since when did the very state of being alive start to drain all the energy from my reserve?! What's going on, what the fuck is going on --- what's going on with my life, god-fucking-damnit!
Must be the night, it's bringing everything out. I'll go sleep it off.
***
~~~*Waited for the Winds at 1.49am*~~~
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Sleep was relatively peaceful for me yesterday night, just that I had another strange dream that I recall was rather long and fantastical. I can't quite put down the entire sequence of events and most of the details as the lack of significance I can see in the dream diminishes its vividness in some way, but I remember particular scenes that were exceptionally memorable, namely the part where I went on a roller coaster ride with a bunch of people at night that went all the way up into the sky and I didn't pull down the security bar, so the seatbelt was all I got against gravity and erratic directions. There were a handful of scenes after that which I can't exactly remember, except for the fact that there was a lot of running and hiding, in a place that was filled with old European architecture of which some had religious attributions, I think. And I remember trains, the old steam-engine ones, though I don't know where to place them in my dream.
For the last scene, I was hiding with one of my dream companions (god she came back, after such a damn long time) on the second level of a church building, or rather something like an...intermediate floor? Mezzanine? It was pretty much an abandoned place as there were no artificial lights, equipment and facilities, and barely enough room to move about without crouching and crawling all the time. The only light and wind we got was from a large circular hole in the floor, through which we could look down at the people passing by beneath us down what looked like a wide corridor or walkway with lots of pillars, presumably near a train station (ah, so that's where the trains come in!) since we could hear all the rumbling mechanic noises incoming trains would make. I remember whispering to my companion that I've heard voices from down there talking about hearing voices and things up 'here', that is, where we were, and that if we don't change our places soon our hideout would be exposed and we would be caught.
For what, though, I'm not sure. It's rather common for me to be running and hiding in my dreams at times without a clue as to the purpose of it all...or rather my dream self knows, but my conscious self doesn't.
Hmm.
***
~~~*Waited for the Winds at 9.00am*~~~
Monday, June 11, 2012
Well, since you're pretty much the only person who can and does access this blog now, I suppose I'll just talk directly in this post. Not sure if you've started on or finished your revision for Econs yet, but here are the JPEG files for the Chapter 1 Resource Allocation mindmap I was doing on Bubbl for the past coupla days, just a summary of everything from the notes (except for the last Labour Market section, so don't miss out on that). Thought I'd share them in case they might help in one way or another.
Map's pretty frikkin'-ass big, so Bubbl let me download everything in a zip file with 6 JPEGs.
Gosh it's probably frikkin' confusing now that it's split up into six parts and all. Plus you'll have to zoom in because I had to squish so many things that I set certain bubbles to the smallest fonts, and some of the words seem to have escaped the borders for a handful of bubbles with the compression into JPEG. If you want a more...convenient way to view / access the map, you can go create an account at www.bubbl.us and then I'll share the online doc with you.
Alright, on to Chapter 2 on firms. Not sure if I have enough energy to do another huge-ass map for that haha...not to mention chapter 2 probably has more graphs with those MC and AFC shits so it's quite hard to digitally summarise everything. Guess you're on your own for that. Jya.
***
~~~*Waited for the Winds at 2.25pm*~~~
Goodness grief, I pulled out my tablet today (why of course I wasn't intending to draw and procrastinate) and realised that I've somehow landed myself in this shit situation where 1) my photoshop has mysteriously crashed 2) my tablet too. Well I assume my tablet has died in one way or another based on its extremely poor performance when I used it with Painttool SAI; the lines came out all jerky and angular, and there was very nearly no pressure sensitivity in terms of line thickness when I used the pen tool, even though I made sure that CTE was connected to Windows virtual machine and my pen tool settings weren't far off the last time I checked.
Worse still, whenever I start sketching or doing some gestural lines that require running over the same area on the tablet for a little more than, say, five times, the stupid canvas would suddenly zoom out and move downwards and I have no fuckin' clue why, not to mention the extremely annoying lag that I hardly ever experienced before this.
Sigh. I think it might have been because of the drop it suffered in the print room last time round...there are two rather long and noticeable cracks and a score of tiny scratches, and while those might not be the main reason for my tablet's poor performance now, the impact of the drop might very well have done a thing or two. I can't figure out my photoshop, though. Keeps crashing the moment I open a new canvas. It's quite a familiar situation because if I remember correctly I've dealt with the same shit in my previous windows OS too...but I can't remember how I fixed it, if I did anything at all. Maybe my com's just having one of its moods. That'd be a first, though, and not very amusing too.
Right. So now I'm stuck with no tools for digital painting and it may very well turn out that it'll be like this for a pretty long time, at least until I get a new tablet. Not sure how long a tablet's life-span is...mine's been with me for a good four years, think I've read on DA that some people's died in two even though they took good care of it (well of course "good" is subjective, but nevermind). Well, I guess if I do end up restocking I'll get myself an Intuos then, about time for an upgrade.
For now I suppose I'll just have to deal with good ol' traditional.
OR maybe I could finally find some reason to get my ass back to proper academic work.
***
~~~*Waited for the Winds at 1.14pm*~~~
Friday, June 8, 2012
Relationships are such inexplicably crazy things, and yet I seem to find myself frequently amidst crossfires of emotion and thought in a social circle only too small to accommodate such intensity. Today was particularly...should I say, rich, in terms of personal consultations from a couple of friends; there was the Yan Yong problem that has been troubling Ahmad for quite some time now till the last straw today, and a distant friend with whom I hardly ever keep in touch since primary school graduation suddenly messaged me on facebook, telling me how "lost" he was feeling about his life and certain situations he's entangled in. Not that I mind having personal problems "unloaded" onto me of course, because to me the very fact that they're willing to share their concerns shows that I do matter to them at some level, and while I do have more to mull over each time I listen, it's a sacrifice I am willing to make for two main reasons: the first being the knowledge that I might be able to make them feel better, and the second being the ability to express my gratitude for the value they see in our relationship.
Just saying that, you know, I don't mind. I don't mind at all.
Quite tired today so I won't update much on all that transpired. Probably some other day. Just not now.
***
~~~*Waited for the Winds at 11.07pm*~~~
Thanks to all the blogs the designer referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
Adobe Photoshop Elements for supernatural abilities
