today and last night

so afraid that maybe after having had and given so much we might soon perish on the shore too.

romanticisation

a walk down Memory Lane yesterday,
all around me i could hear people say
the things i used to hear,
in the places that used to be - was it not
only last year?

a Step Back In Time in the near future,
passing by the things i was so sure
i knew everything about,
with the people who used to be - were we not
strangers to doubt?

how does it feel to grow old and realise what you had believed in so strongly was actually youth's folly? bob dylan today confessed that he never wanted to be the voice of any generation. already i can hear mr reeves's heart bleed, and what will he think now when he looks at his unparalleled dylan collection? today im afraid that maybe mayday isnt really all hung and wound up like i am, and maybe mayday doesnt really relate to me. this is the disabusing of hope, the hope that maybe there is someone thinking your thoughts and actually able to "vocalise...in clear sentences". but that after all, is the privilege of being young, to believe so completely and faithfully in an idea to the exclusion of almost all else. i told julienne yesterday i am very 1989. maybe when im thirty i'll look back and realise that all i was was teenage 2004. but that's okay, because right now i think i am 1989, and i am 1989.

fifteen by yoji yamada

one of those films that gave me The Feeling, like american beauty and run lola run. daisuke is bound in life to things he never asked for - a smothering mother, an awkward father, and an eternity in school. unsatisfied and thirsting for more, he ups in search of an ancient cedar far away from his home in yokohama, hitchhiking to his mecca. his first encounter is an old man brought up the old school way, and his opinions are so unpalatable to daisuke that tries to jump out in the middle of the highway - daisuke can no longer tolerate a second more of being suffocated. daisuke is next picked up by two men, one a bumbling unsuccessful man, the other a truck driver. in a uniting moment, the truck driver relates the former's plight, and the two [it is revealed later the truck driver had tried to run away from home before] ponder the possibilities of their lives. he next accepts a ride from a female truck driver, a mother too, who seems to understand daisuke and also daisuke's mother. what later surfaces is that she faces the same problem with her son, an overweight overaged boy closed in on himself. daisuke and the son connect in more ways than one. they are ronins, masterless samurai who will progress at their own pace, at the beckoning of no one. in the same way that daisuke's father thinks of his son as a fool and constantly tries to make him experience the world, the lady trucker realises that she has been mistaken, that her own son actually has deeper thoughts than she thinks. they part ways and he next meets a climber on her way to the cedar. on the way, she advices "if it gets dark, or rains, take shelter and wait for help". for daisuke, however, it will not work - "if i walk more, i might find my way out" - and this conveniently conveys the crux of the film - to what extent should man find his own way out in life? his last encounter is with another old man. and this time daisuke faces the question of what it takes to grow, become "full fledged", age and die. in the film, people who have grown up the "good" way are not "full fledged", whereas the reverse is the opposite, showing that there are actually many ways to growing up. through the film, daisuke is shown to be hardworking, thoughtful and sensitive as much as he is idealistic and rebellious. when he returns, his father recognises his maturity and does not reprimand him. in the end, daisuke is confident and emboldened by his identity as a ronin, and is hence able to reconcile himself to school because he appreciates his way of growing up as one that is not hampered by school.

again

back to j1 with pink floyd again. and also rules of attraction again, struck again in all my paul-ness

and also

im afraid of you and me. you because i might have nothing more to give you one day and me because i might expect of you things you dont even have

already

halfway past prelims already and never has anything that looked so hard been so easy. of course results arent far down the road and when it comes to that hard/easy doesnt even come within a mile of did-you-pray-the-night-before. of course i did, but i never know, because when i pray my mind is all scrambled up with john donne - "sweare by thy selfe...thy sunne shall shine as it shines now" - and womanwarrior - "all scrambled up" - and god knows what he does with prayers that come from silly worried people too preoccupied with their lives.

i would break down at your feet/ and beg forgiveness,/ plead with you./ but i know that it's too late/ and now there's nothing I can do.

maybe literature shouldnt use texts that are so reminiscent of life, because what happens to student who cant tell book-life from his-life? and then the images from the texts will extend into his life and all the jumble from his life will reach down and mangle his hard-memorised quotes.

so i try to laugh about it,/ cover it all up with lies./ i try to laugh about it,/ hiding the tears in my eyes,/ because boys don't cry, boys don't cry

life after prelims already looks so promising. daily runs at canal route, which i probably will never run at again once i leave school and school leaves the building. where then, will old friends gather to run, and relive the sharing of dreams and secret pointers, far enough from comfort-ground yet close enough? a presentation for fairuz's firm, the first step to moving away from things i know now, promising and momentous. already i am running out of "promising" and stocking up on "we used to". complacent for a seventeen-year-old, but at the edge of teen age, every year closer to adulthood - 18, 21 - is a momentous step towards death, because once you stop growing, you start aging, dying.

The Cure - Boys Don't Cry

afraid doesnt even begin to cover this

it doesnt

still life - suede

this still life is all i ever do,
there by the window quietly killed for you.
in the glass house, my insect life,
crawling the walls under electric lights.
i'll go into the night, into the night,
she and i into the night.

is this still life all i'm good for too?
there by the window quietly killed for you.

and they drive by like insects do.
they think they don't know me,
they hired a car for you.
to go into the night, into the night,
she and i into the night.

and this still life is all I ever do,
there by the window quietly killed for you.
but it's still, still, life.

party like it's 1989

for the unenlightened, watching deformed frogs and roadkill is probably the most liberating experience a bored a-level prepper could go through. that and listening to dance-gamelan-hiphop fusion - minimalism with a touch of fun makes good studying music.

jingga dalam wajahku seperti bulan tidur dalam hatimu, berdinding kelam kedinginnan