| long time no see |
[22 Oct 2008|11:40pm] |
This is a snippet from Wikipedia about the Qing Dynasty in China. Poet-slaying dynasty!
"Literary persecution(4) Chai Sian, wrote a piece of poem' Any color not true color but red color, alien flowers has become king flowers', to show that he prefered red colored peony over purple colored peony, and stating 'Red peony is King peony' and 'Other color peony are aliens'. Unfortunately in Han Chinese language 'Red Color' and the surname of late Ming dynasty emperors share the same character:'Chu'. Qianlong then accused the poet of trying to attack the Manchus by innuendo, implying Manchus are 'aliens' and not 'King flowers', and ordered the beheading of the poet."
That is so sad, but also so horribly funny.
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[24 Feb 2008|11:15pm] |
I'm sorry I have been absent so long. I feel I've lost a bit of soul in the time I've been away from cyberspace, but that could just be growing up.
I really really really never anticipated it to be this difficult. I think I may kill myself when I start to actually age.
Anyway, because I'm sure everybody is interested in my emotional and psychological constitution, here is a song by Of Montreal that almost-perfectly encapstulates the two.
Forecast Fascist Future
The language of the frost lobs dead balloons over ruins today
In view of wan wordless crowds that chase waifs to spires with fiery plumes
And incite the firmament’s portrait of ’A Drowning in Styx’
That gives impotents kicks
Boredom murders the heart of our age while sanguinary creeps take the stage
Boredom strangles the life from the printed page
Masking vapor trails from Mercury for a killer on Umbria
Who crippled birch mares now briars replace their old cotton limbs
Who will tell? I mean would it make a difference?
Look metal flower petal tears do not even appear in the Myopic Mirror
The moon was sagging in the sky as I held her face to mine
All our thoughts were coming in so clear beyond the Myopic Mirror
We were darting from the place where we just couldn’t fit
For away from all the violence safely flying in our own orbit
Why do I always have to tell you ”forget about the precient signs!”?
Forget about the life we knew
May we never be stripped of anything we love
may we grow so gentle never go mental
may we never go go mental
may we always stay stay gentle.
The next time I update, I promise it will be better! Pra-mees!
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| I am a sunflower. |
[04 Aug 2007|12:25pm] |
I drew things today after not drawing for a long while! I did this after reading a bit of Midnight Days by Neil Gaiman, who never fails to inspire. Yay Neil.
They are, once again, sunflower-themed.
This one is called "But where is the Sun?"
( This one is called Maddening ShroudCollapse )
Also, I must link you all to Screaming Mimi, an incredible, but not-yet-very-well-known band I recently discovered on last.fm and am now obsessed with. They're like the dresden dolls, or the long blondes but cinematic and haunting, but somehow also foot-tappingly catchy, and the vocals absolutely smouldering. Give them a listen!
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| buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car |
[25 Jul 2007|10:58am] |
I'm at work right now and they are making me do lots of things.
Yesterday for example, I attended a meeting during which I had to say stuff in front of Important People about a matrix I made. Suddenly I'm spewing out all this blah blah legislation for the 14th congress blah legal restrictions on the foreign direct investments negative list blah blah this is Crystal Huang from the American Chamber of Commerce and I'm wondering if the minimum paid-up capital equity has been amended from 2.5 million dollars to blah blah blah. It is intense and soul-sucking, but I am learning I am learning. I am also really enjoying collecting people's business cards. It's fun. Rather like collecting stamps. They're all miraculously the same size, but with different colorful logos on them and some parts, like where it says Citigroup or USAID, the text is a different texture than the rest of the card and bulges out delightfully.
Lane linked me to this Economist article today. It's by an obituary editor, a very beautifully written and poignant piece; she talks about the monotony of office life and then transitions into discussing death. This passage particularly strikes a chord:
"My world contracts to a layout, a line-length, a spell-check and a story of somewhere else, where I try to imagine I have been. Sometimes the television connects me to breaking news (or the late night football) in yet another sphere. The world I do not enter is the one beyond the blinds. That far-too-bright reality is the one I must not waste my time on. “Don’t look out of the window!” cried an Irish teacher at my primary school, whacking my arm with a ruler as I dreamed of escaping over the high holly hedges and the walls. She left me wondering defiantly what windows were for."
In other news I am reading the Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It's a brilliant, satirical novel about the Devil visiting the atheistic Soviet Union. I highly recommend.
That's all.
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| watchout! it's the loveydove! |
[06 Jul 2007|09:39pm] |
A shot from what feels like forever ago, taken by Lane's uncle Beret.
I miss him very, very much.
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| whimsy |
[04 Jul 2007|11:16am] |
So here I am, at work, writing up a qualitative paper summary on a powerpoint on attracting US$3 billion Foreign Direct Investment to the Philippines. Yes, tedium. Except suddenly I want to write a poem and I am neither premenstrual or particularly self-pitying (my usual preconditions for waxing poetic) but the lines sort of wrote themselves anyway. They're rather silly and singsongy, satisfying more a whim than a woe.
Do not lie with your sleep-crowded eyes;
for a dream in the wake is worth two in the sleeping.
And though a star may be bright against a lidless night
a fading firefly isn't worth keeping.
Do not descend like a queen or decree like a king
Or do what the next man can't
There is much to be learned from the pattern on ferns,
And the green load on tiny red ants.
That was fun to write. Least this decaying husk of a blog is now updated.
Also, I can't stop listening to French music. I suppose this would qualify as another development in my recently-acquired and often self-mocking pretentiousness. But Alizee's lyrics are so beautiful I can't help it! This one song is about toys coming to life. Awesome.
Kay, back to Tedium mode.
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[11 Jun 2007|08:30pm] |
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I'm back in Manila! It is so sweltering hot here, I can barely breathe. Otherwise, home is sweet indeed. So what's going on, everybody?
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| When we have found all the meanings and lost all the mysteries, we will be alone, on an empty shore. |
[13 May 2007|08:07pm] |
Lane and I went to watch Arcadia by Tom Stoppard last night at the Court Theatre. It was amazing. If my love for Stoppard hadn't already peaked to impossible heights with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, it has now. The play covers a delightfully breathless spectrum from sex to physics and math and chaos theory to Byron's love life to Sentimentalism over Rationality, Art over Science, and determism and sex and literature and and and. Kay, my haphazard assessment doesn't really narrow things down, but thing is I didn't really fully grasp it myself upon first viewing which is why once all this academic insanity is over I am going to buy myself a copy and pore relentlessly over it. In any case t'was an extremely poignant play, as well as intensely hilarious.
Also, my fortune cookie today revealed: Ask not what your fortune cookie can do for you, but what you can do for your fortune cookie. For serious.
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| fly, little fish! |
[08 May 2007|09:28pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 complacent |
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A notebook paper doodley-diddle:
"The Great Escape"
Just in case anybody wondered, I am currently reading Magus by John Fowles, Lane's recommendation, and enjoying it immensely. Read this book, people!
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[29 Apr 2007|10:44am] |
I've been in kind of a down mood all day. It's very hormone induced. I'm battling it with crappy poetry, but hey it's effective.
Shades
The blinds are drawn
halfway and
The absorbing silence
lingers
Fretful and
peaceful and
softly slumberless
There are shades here
in this land
Pale shades
and glaring shades
Oh how they change
in excruciating degree:
A hundred shades
from dust
is the most electric blue
A thousand shades from that:
who can know?
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| living is easy with eyes closed. |
[01 Apr 2007|05:48pm] |
I'm updating now, the first time in a long time, to say several things, the first of which is:
Here comes the sun, doot-dee doo doo. Here comes the sun, and I say, it's alright!
There is nothing terribly wrong with life. Meanwhile, there is nothing quite terribly wonderful either. I am existing in a weird neutral state that is banal at worst and wholesome at best.
I wish my creative drive would sustain me long enough at a time to actually create something substantial.
Also, you guys, the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court is excellent. Neil Gaiman reads it!
That's all. I think this day may just mark the death of insightful, revelatory posts.
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| I want a god that stays dead, not plays dead. |
[15 Feb 2007|07:45pm] |
I really, really, really don't enjoy writing this Nietzsche paper.
FIVE hours at the library and I come up with a whole page of scattered insane ideas, and a headache that splits with a fucking saw.
Am. So. Screwed.
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| quaintness. |
[08 Feb 2007|08:19pm] |
A corner of the little courtyard outside the building where my art class is:
It's such a pretty place.
I shall post more later; right now I should get some sleep. I had five hours of it last night, and that is not nearly enough.
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| dreams. |
[02 Feb 2007|03:08pm] |
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mood |
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 cold |
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Several weeks ago I bought a Dali book from Belmonte for twenty dollars. Every night before I go to bed, I'd read it for about fifteen minutes, look at the pictures, eventually doze off. I've been having the most surreal dreams since. Last night for example, I dreamt that my nose started to bleed, and it wouldn't stop and I kept wanting to sneeze some huge thing out of it, but it wouldn't come out, so I reached two fingers up my left nostril (they fit, of course, as they do in dreams) and after much rummaging, extracted a miniature ivory tusk. And then I dreamt I was careening through the streets of someplace in South Africa swinging from a rope attached to a camel, who was atop an elephant. The elephant was doing the careening. My dad was taking pictures of it all.
Art project was due Thursday, we had to critique everyone's works. It was nerve-wracking.
( three drawingsCollapse )
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| the sadness of flowers. |
[24 Jan 2007|08:32pm] |
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My art class may just kill me. I have 40 sketches to do by the 30th. Four. Tee. I could do them quick and half-assed like most people in my class, or I could strive for an awesomeness that would eat up all my time. Definitely going to do the latter. Agh.
I drew this several days ago in class after taking a break from depicting two plastic cups arranged precariously in a rectangular box. I thought I was using india ink, but it so happened I was using acrylic. And I don't know where to find a scanner, so this is a camera shot.
There are two things I badly want right now:
1) For winter to end.
2) To fly to Neverland and stay there for a very long time.
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| When songs make sense. |
[13 Jan 2007|02:00pm] |
Oh Darci, Darci [don't look so sad]
Don't let the daytime [get you down]
Because we will be wild like children [wild like children]
Once the black has veiled this sky
No pushing buttons [no telling lies]
No pointed fingers [trying to keep you quiet]
Just you and I misbehaving [misbehaving]
Oh trying our best to feel alive
We won't ever let them win
When we are younger oh our hearts are so much bolder
Oh the pressure is not as great
We floated weightless through the tops of trees
But as we get older, oh, our vision becomes blurred
And then the fog it slips right in
Now you're wondering how
Oh yeah, you're wondering how you ended up here
Oh how you end up here
The hateful, hateful [tough little boys]
That move their lips [whenever you're around]
So smart, just shouting answers [shouting answers]
I guess their fathers taught them well
So sit real still [they've got to size you up]
Don't move your mouth [they don't like when you talk]
They're trying their best to define you [to define you]
They're trying their best to keep you down
But we won't ever let them win
Because this world you know it can get so crazy
All these people talk a lot
They know this, they know it all
What a drag
And you know there'll always be some oddball singing
Just remember to sing along
Yeah you better start singing a long
This place could be so beautiful
You just can't let them pull that cloth over your eyes
Just keep on screaming, oh yeah
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Bop bop ba, bop bop ba
Posts convoluted with song lyrics and song lyrics alone are lame, but when a song rings true and describes everything better than you can, you gotta give it some credit.
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| Through the looking glass. |
[05 Jan 2007|01:37am] |
"Is she like me?" Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, "There's another little girl in the garden, somewhere!"
"Well, she has the same awkward shape as you," the Rose said: "but she's redder--and her petals are shorter, I think."
"They're done up close, like a dahlia," said the Tiger-lily: "not tumbled about, like yours."
"But that's not your fault," the Rose added kindly. "You're beginning to fade, you know--and then one can't help one's petals getting a little untidy."
Alice didn't like this idea at all.
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[10 Dec 2006|12:24pm] |
Twenty hours and two stopovers later, Crystal is home.
It's strange, to say the least. I feel like it's summer again... which I suppose, makes sense since we did move to this house, this beige house, at the beginning of summer and I've spent most of my time then milling about in it. It also makes sense because none of my friends from '06 are here yet, and that was how it was in the latter stages of summer. I feel prettymuch timewarped. In fact, I feel like this place has absorbed all past feelings of nostalgia, profound boredom, pre-college excitement, summer lethargy, listlessness, and whatnot and now that I'm back, plans to gradually infiltrate my brain with them again by process of atmospheric diffusion, or something evil.
But hey! I'm equipped with wonderful college-thoughts to battle this. I suppose it is good to be home, after all.
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