Season's Greetings and a Ho Ho Ho

Christmas is a time of sorrows, where we are constantly reminded that Christ died so that there is no entropy, and we have no end to our misery in life insofar that we have to continue it even if we are dead.

We give presents to one another to comfort ourselves only to find out that we have absolute no use for the things that we receive, and it ends up in the storage room, the purgatory of inanimate objects, before we assign them to the dustbin.

We put up trees, decorate them in a bid to cheer ourselves up, except that the glittering and shining cast a darker shadow over us when we stand at the foot of the green monstrosity. And we wonder how much money and time was spent to put that all up, only to lug it back to the storage after everything was concluded, depriving the people of any further meaning. Meanwhile, another tree was killed for our 'pleasure'.

Year after year, we are cursed to repeat this sacrilegious practice and to complete the horror, welcome the dreaded new year where I inch closer to my grave, seeing it but not able to step into it, despite the assurance by friends.

Small wonder Santa Claus says 'Ho ho ho'.

Simple feat

Everything sucks. Big time.

Once more, my friend, once more

Despite the dictionary explanation of the term 'quaser', the word is easily confused with 'goals' or 'aims. But 'quaser' is more than that. It is a synthesis of 'goal' and 'meaning to life' combined. It is a state rather than an event. One cannot say my 'quaser' is to have a dionysian party replete with sex and booze. It's a 'goal', definitely, but no quaser. A quaser is a state of the situation that completes a person, a source of the answers to the purpose of a satisfied, content human being. Job fulfillment is a quaser. A spiritual quaser, so to speak.

I had the opportunity to be ridiculed over this invention, but nevertheless, the word 'goal' seeks to be reinvented for its lack of sufficiency in this aspect. It is thoroughly hoped that whoever out there is reading it, finds his or her quaser and thus finds harmony in their lives, for all the discontentment out there in the messy reality of life.

Surprisingly, all these are coming from someone who looks at the mirror everyday and wondering when the bodily husk is going to change.

So there

This is the kind of melody/video that pervades this blog here so the raison d'etre. Et voila! C'est comme ma vie!

The Player

The plain old tunes
strummed off the
dirty cracked guitar
Troubles the player not
For it still beckons
the unsuspecting plebian
The player mocks
The recalcitrant sounds
In his ditties and mickeys
And the silence ensues
The slight wind blowing
Across dusty ghost towns

December wordplay

The December winds blow in a certain ennui that leaves me shell-shocked as I mull over my innate capabilities to function as a human being, the exaggeration and downplay of particular characteristics that tease the boundaries of morality and sensibilities. Or rather, tease the Davidian reader in my wordplay.

Inconsolate whimpers of a flighty fancy

Ring-ring
Wake-wake
Oh no!
Eat-eat
Bathe-bathe
Wear-wear
Rush-rush
Bus-bus
Come-come
ufed on enal
Work-work
Lunch-lunch
Work-work
Yippee
Bus-bus
Leave-leave
Home-home
Bathe-bathe
Dinner
Blog-blog
Sleep-sleep
Savvy?

У

я не знаю. я не понимаю. извините а мне всё равно

Recluse

Amidst the ceaseless cacophony
the incessant babbling
of the cantankerous crowd
of syncophants
cankerblossoms all,
the pauses were heavenly indeed.
The change was not apparent,
yet undeniably there. The silence was my sole solace,
that I might care as I withdraw into my newfound hermitude.
With my rediscovered puissance
I sealed the barriers once more
Traisping about, or rather, floating
in submission to the darkness of my making.
The occasional tune
The occasional waking
Disrupts not the final recluse

Eternal Summer

Humans are full of paradoxes. So while I dread the creeping feelings of loneliness, I too, dread the presence of humans in my space. Or maybe it is just me.

I yearn for love, for company, yet is disdainful of the incredulous amount of effort at maintaining the new relationship when the status quo is much easier to sustain. I am no able conversationalist and the silence between is sometimes overwhelming. Rather the silence within the confines of my mind.

Till the end, I am a staunch disbeliever that love is even in existence, when I am constantly supposing that the definition of love is duty speckled with lust or the other way round, as one sees fit. Love is just a convenient term.

And so, the echoes in the dreadful silence of my mind boom louder until I can't hear anybody else, their voices conflated with the sounds of my mental making.

World's End

It is time, isn't it? Atrocities abound, evil is rampant, cruelty is ubiquitous. I detest the false humanity of mankind. I abhor it. Every race has its massacres and the End is truely well-deserved. Let it end, while it still can.

Quaser

Quaser /ka:r'zз:r/ n. 1 the realization of an ideal, grounded in the relative terms of human gratification and hedonism, although not an absolute. 2 personal achievement essentialized.

A rhyme or two

One, two, buckle my shoe. It's important and crucial that at one and two, the shoe is buckled. If not, once you reach three and four, you'll have to pick up sticks and buckle your shoe at the same time. And it will be messy.

Three-legged frog

Everything is meaningless. That is the purest sense of postmodernism.

Because with postmodernism, everyone is disillusioned. Everyone was deluded.

Voices

This blog is a nook, lying among the vast space of the world wide web. It is a small voice, pleading for its existence, a small voice among the cacophony of the web. It expects not to be heard, except for the occasional stranger. Its pain, merely a glitch among the myriad aches that the body experiences. It expects no response. The voice is lost in the emptiness of the void.

Malade

As image after image flash past the diseased mind, this is a time of peace that normal days wouldn't see. But it is that kind of peace that deadens the mind, deadens the life insofar that life becomes a drugged daze that sees no flux.

It saddens me to see the ruined citadels of my friend's blog, a pale shadow of what it once was. Dusty winds blow across the tattered landscape although my abode fares no better. Maintenance is time-consuming, and the real world affords no time, much less this trifling occupation.

Time passes so fast, people age so quickly, citadels fall and mighty structures crumble. Yet everything moves like my feet across the mud and swamps - my computer included. Time moves so slow now.

I need to cry, yet my tears freeze on my face before they even began. The ice spreads across my heart and my blood but glaciers. I feel nothing yet everything. Who can, who will understand this paradox? Except my other self.

Old boy, old boy, when will the time come? I have waited for so long. And you ask me to wait still.

Odd

I'm always reminded and fascinated by the two characters from a serial that I've seen. One is cold on the outside and warm at the inside, and the other is warm on the outside and cold at the inside.

For those who know me, no points for guessing which one do I belong to.

The fact is, I don't think I will ever be able to muster the least bit of love for anything. Everything is designated as merely duties. It feels ridiculous to ask for anything more. It feels absurd to ask me what I love doing, what I want to do when I grow up and all that related stuff.

It's not to say I don't put in as much effort if I consign everything to Duty. It's just that I don't get that involved if anything collapses. That's the point. I don't feel anything, much less if it collapses.

Of course, the downside is, most of the time, you are alone in your undertakings.

Once

Once, there was this little boy who went for an audition for a kids' programme for the Television. It was a simple game, actually. Musical Chairs. But no matter how the boy tried, he just couldn't find a chair to sit on at the end of the music. For once, he was defeated. It just wasn't him. The game went on for two times, and both times, the boy failed. It was a miserable defeat. And that's that, or so everyone thought.

Notice

Can't help but notice how different the work culture is over there. I mean, strangers greet one another, and people say thank you and good morning to bus drivers. Okay, not only them but virtually everyone. We don't even do that at our workplaces, much less to complete strangers.
To us, it's like touch-and-go. You know, you touch, you go. You don't say anything unless you have problems with the ez-link card. Here, heck, I feel weird even when people say thank you for my patronage. It's just weird.

Need

The truth is, I need to do what I want to do. I mean, hey, I need to have a life. I need to exercise, I need to go memorize some foreign words, you know, being me. What fun is there to life if you just pull the carriage all day. I mean, some people really can bear out the monotony. You know, eat, work, sleep, eat, work, sleep ad infinitum. God, that scares me. You need perks. You need to have a little 'woah' in your life. All right. I need to have lots of 'woah's in my life. That's why I can't be a production operator, even if my life depends on it. That's why I can't stay too long in a place too. That's me.

The Prayer

O Lord, give me the strength each day to overcome all odds, all struggles
For the workplace is just one great bloody battlefield
And the only solace is that little nook which reminds you of a squatter place.
O Lord, give me the energy to handle each assignment
As the journey itself is enough to kill twenty elephants
And the work is enough to kill forty
If thou indeed be able to provide such a hefty number of elephants.
O Lord, let me not be bogged down, inundated by that tsunami of worksheets
Teach me to build an ark, if need be
Do not let it zombify me
Let me retain some semblance of sanity
And my personality so that people can still recognize me
When they put me in that nice little box.
Although of course, by that time, nothing matters.

'Duh'

Y'know, if I knew God, I'll probably ask Him for a few million bucks or so. Maybe that's why I don't get to meet Him, notwithstanding the fact that I am an atheist. The ennui becomes me. The idea of 'work' seems so alien, real work, that is, not the kind that I am doing right now, typing. That's a hobby.

Y'see, I am a full subscriber to hedonism. Although probably almost everyone else is too, except for the workaholics. I can even hear the 'duh' from David, as in 'what's new'. The fact is, hedonism requires money. People often earn so as to spend, despite the apparent illogic. Why bother earning only to whittle your account away?

Well, I don't know. Humans work hard and many of them spend harder, as though to offset the misery in working. Examples are everywhere, but I try not to be in that subset. As it is, people now can't live without work. Another 'duh', you may say. True, but people tend to take this fact for granted. And compare this logic with another: People can't live with too much work. They get stressed up and end up killing themselves or others. So there you have it. Humans are one illogical bunch. Can't have none, can't have too much. Work and spend, work and spend. I would be irritated too, if I were God.

A Brief Moment of Lucidity

Reading David's post about the inanity of the KFC staff, I am tickled, although that is probably the wrong response and an affront to David. But the fact is, it is true.

For judging from the impression I have over humanity in general, what he is seeing is probably universal. That is, if Singaporeans are indeed indicative of the world at large.

If Terrorism is not directly on our doorstep, and when I mean 'doorstep', I mean right before their very eyes, people will not be more careful or alert thereafter, if there is a thereafter right after that.

You see, humans are such that the tangible matters more than the intangible. They must see it to believe it and act on it. The baby understands 'papa' and 'mama' before abstract ideas like 'judgment' and 'power'. The conventional (and pragmatic) adult Singaporean wants 'business' and 'money' before 'culture' and for that matter, 'literature' or 'philosophy', which explains why I, foremost, am not particularly in demand by the employers.

In fact, as I appraise the children in my workplace, I have grown to feel that the earmarks of maturity is the capability to apprehend the intangible, that is, planning for the unforseeable future. Children who play all day without regards to their study do not appreciate the merits of education, although, there are occasions when I observe it in adults as well.

But I digress. To return to David's situation, it is a phenomenon of what the Chinese say 'If you don't see the coffin, you won't weep', that is, you will have to experience it up close and personal before you will believe it. People like to cry when it is too late. To do so before, is like being paranoiac or delusional.

Such is the characteristic of humanity. And I am tickled, nevertheless, at his observation.

Deluded

‘You are filled with delusions and self-righteousness.’

But aren’t we all? In one way or another, we psyche ourselves conscious or unconsciously to accomplish everyday tasks to complicated ones, and upon success, bring the delusions onto another level of reality. That is, we now sincerely believe that our competence is truly there, supported by tangible evidence. But are we? When truth is merely a matter of perspective, it is most dubious whether your competence is another one of your delusions and the affirmation by other people an elaborate contrivance for your sake.

What is reality anyway and whose reality should we believe in?

To tear away my delusions will mean a complete breakdown of my self. My delusions are what make up my reality. I construe my reality to be thus and thus it is how it is. Am I to let go my reality to believe another’s reality? Whose life would I be living then?
Delusions have its virtues: it makes life all the more tolerable. Call it wilful delusions, call it pure stubbornness. But if it is what makes me sane, so be it.

As they say, keep your friends close, and keep your delusions closer.

The River Flows

What are blogs nowadays, anyway. A private document that floats in the public domain, a Capitalist manifestation within the narcissistic psyche. David remarks on the seeming impenetrability of my postings, which probably explains the disinterest of the readership. Lucidity is apparently a crucial factor to understanding and usually enjoyment of the text, but the view is too simplistic and reductive, I think.

I love texts that elude easy comprehension, despite the effort involved. The way they manipulate the language is like handing you a ball of ice, the words slippery in their meanings and where you could only grasp at the edges, or for that matter, slide over the edges. Meanings are delayed or linked to obscure matrixes which leaves one wondering whether they mean what you think they mean, although that is the point here. Interpretation relies on the reader, not the writer.

Instead, one reads any text as though caught in the undertow, where the currents drag you along and eddies grab at you from all sides. You feel for the flow, the hypostasis of the entire river, and enjoy the sheer thrill of the ride while it lasts.

It is not often that I get all this silence to myself, where the only sounds reverberating off the walls of my mind is my voice. Everyday, thoughts assail me, none of which is mine, insofar that I feel myself alienated from my own mind. I was barely holding on to that delicate and remaining thread of sanity.

Thank god for holidays.

The Wave Crashes (Yet again)

It is tiring to fend off wave after wave of lambasts, situation after situation that begs to be dealt with, a war that offers no respite. Life is a war with death, a violent affair whose means is the end.

I am getting sick and disgusted with everything that I do. Every molecule in my body is crying for the respite that never seems to come, every cell is begging for rest that will probably arrive only with death. I face onslaughts, deluges every day. My energy is being drained with age and stress. I face the ultimate entropy of my self. I face the cessation of everything I hold dear. It can't go on anymore.

Everything calls for attention, this job that I hold. Everything calls for details, and I am too stretched to do that. I am no longer competent in the post that I hold. I am on the verge. But who cares.

It is that terminal stagnation that frightens me. It is that inexorable degeneration into the lay that frightens me. When I look around and I see the supposedly educated mired in and perpetuating the mesolect of theirs, it frightens me. Is that their idea of linguistic competency? I shudder still.

This is an age of the exercise of linguistic freedom and plurality. It is an age of the postmodern where Stalinistic control over the linguistic domain is regressive and abhorred, if not a downright apostasy.

I will not rot in that place. Period.

Freedom (Free-dumb)

Freedom is possible only within the restrictions placed by the big players. Like the mouse who plys the maze, it may be free to make its choices of movement, but it remains within the confines of its maze. Freedom is illusionary. Aspirations are hoaxes.

How can one love anything (Part 1)

You used to love me
The flash of flaming fires
Of life kindling free
Has died, ah, my tears
Doused it, all that I need see
The cold hard flame of my life stirs
In unhurried ecstasy
Assuaging my fears

Desolate

Day 2

Another dismal day that does not bear the remotest significance to my dreams, my 'ambitions'. He words me, girls. He words me. It is damning how the absence of work and the plethora of the same distorts my mind almost as easily. Do I need more of the former, or the latter? Will I ever regain the semblance of sanity once again?

The mundanity, the routine stifles me, that vapidity. When shall I tear myself away from the gossamer threads of life? Everyday, I manage contrivances, and let contrivances manage me. It's a maelstrom out there, and my mind along with it. I'm not sure where reality begins and ends anymore. Or for that matter, I'm not even sure where my sanity begins or ends either. There is a pain in my chest, a dull throbbing kind of pain that runs across my chest. The normalcy of life is a malady. Death is the medicine, it seems.

His cold, skeletal hand beckons me, as always, and I am swept away by his good looks. If ever I could be like him, the same charming gaze, the same cold stare that bespeaks an emotionless soul. If ever I could be like him. This is the desolate world.

Mired

Day 1

Time is funny. It does not obey laws. Neither do people, generally.

How can anyone live on? How can anyone bear living out his life? Humans just eat, sleep and work, accompanied by some hedonistic activities that have no meaning by itself. Nothing has meaning in this world. Why should watching movies, listening to music bear any significance at all to life, except placating the hedonistic soul? Why should helping people have any meaning at all but extending the life, and hence the sorrows of others? Amelioration brings temporary happiness which is later drowned in the depthless sorrow that we call life.

As my life plays on, the droning dirge suffocates me as I languish in that eternal darkness of my mind. Life plays on.