399: sure

398: listening to the winds of change

They come, they come, to build a wall between us. You know that they won’t win.

397: living in a rhythm where the minutes’re working overtime

I feel like I’m running around in circles. I’m probably just panicking for no good reason, as I always do, but it’s weird to care and not care at the same time. Just like how I feel 半桶水 about most things nowadays; can’t decide which way to go or another.

I feel a bit guilty sometimes, that I’m never 100% anything. But I get the feeling I don’t know how to. Some part of me’s somewhere far away, dreaming of a time where I can get away from here.

396: we are always running for the thrill of it

You don’t know about the little things that we do without, when that whole mad season comes around.

395: reason #2358435 to do corporate law instead

The best kind of judge —

— is the insulting kind of judge.

394: society, you’re a crazy breed

When you want more than you have, you think you need

When you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed

I think I need to find a bigger place, because when you have more than you think, you need more space

393: one of us misread

You know how every girl has fantasies?

I had a dream two nights ago. It was a normal party, and everyone was there. It was a gig somewhere, and people were singing, playing. Kind of like in 500 Days, but less cool. It was in the lobby of a shopping centre (I remember the escalators).

There were looks and glances, stolen moments. I felt the stares travelling all the way from across the floor. I think that’s the thing about dreams; you’re hyper-aware of everything that goes on around you, just because you can see everything. Every small detail, things that don’t make sense, even things that don’t apply to you. You see how other people sneak away to do something, how others linger on and try to avoid being noticed. How some people want to do something and then visibly (or not so visibly) stop themselves. Exercising self-control, always checking themselves. Dreaming is a wonderful thing. You see everything.

Anyway. Back to the point. Some guy took my hand and led me away, and said “you don’t know how difficult it is to watch you and think about you being with someone else”, straight to my face. On hindsight, this is probably quite funny. But I was touched anyway, at that point in time (even in my sleep — strange how the mind works). Fantasies are awesome. Because no one ever says this kind of stuff to girls in real life.

It helped that he was wearing a checked shirt. But I don’t remember his face anymore.

392: something in the air tonight

It’s always a hard choice deciding whether you feel worse that you needed to be lied to, or whether you just weren’t worth the truth.

Damn, I think I need a drink. Or five.

391: five hundred days is pretty long

The only people for me are the mad ones.

(As usual, cut for spoilers, 500 Days of Summer.)

390: 我们都别说谎

Here is the story of someone who loved not wisely, but too well. Here is the story of someone who remembers everything, from start to finish. Here is the story of someone who has been up, and down, gone the long way, only to find herself back at the beginning. People never really move from the same spot; they’re the same people they always were. Shallow, selfish, cold. Scared. Alone, lonely, awake in the middle of the night. When the same things run through your head, the same scenes, the same words, and your pillow is wet when your eyes open. Your hair curls in tangles, your fingers are clenched. You hold on to the same old dreams. But we’re running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears.

389: i reach out for you (and our hearts collide)

Checked shirt days are rare. Checked shirt days are the days when the clouds are grey and the sky is overcast and it threatens to rain all day but it doesn’t. Not till you’re inside ensconced in the building where you are constantly on the verge of freezing. But you don’t because your checked shirt saves you. Checked shirts are for days when you feel lonely and cold and require some warmth. A hug that doesn’t need to come from people. Checked shirts are for warm coffee and nice books and hiding in your bed.

Anyway I just bought another one, so that’s one more hug for me!

388: look at the stars

I was wrong. There is a bigger storm coming.

387: circa july 2005

Four years on, nothing has changed.

There are many things that will tear you apart if you let them, and all of them have lines.

386: to know it, and love it for what it is

There was never a greater moment of happiness when I looked at my shadow on the wall while the piano was playing and I was singing at the top of my voice watching everything go by. There was never a bigger smile on my face, and I knew it for sure. The lights were changing and the stage was empty, and all around the voices churned. As somebody fiddled with the camera we leaped across the stage like children, scrawling words into the empty air. Sleepy faces were turned up towards the ceiling. I heard all this music flowing out, into the stage, into our heads and minds. Yet somehow at the other end of the stage hung a deep and pervasive sorrow. There is something tragic in silence, in juxtaposition, in contrast.

There will be no other time like this time. It is one of the greatest things in life, I think — to feel joy, and recognise it, at the very same time.

385: 小さな世界

There’s a weight spreading heavily across my chest. The last jump, the last shout. That night I was the happiest I was in a long time, but my emotions are all mixed up and I’ve spent the past week not knowing what to think or do.

Tell me this is normal. Why do I always go searching for doomed endings. Be still.

384: even though the moment passed me by

It pains me a lot to say this. But part of me wishes I wasn’t here. This is really not funny at all.

383: put it down for tonight

Dear friends, I think we have a legend in the making.

382: the common tragedy of adulthood

I want to go shopping. I want to go to the beach. I want to just do nothing for a few days and rot in my bed. I want to be skinny. I want to go on holiday. I want to scream at someone or scream at myself, or, failing that, go into a Channel 8 induced bout of hysteria. Because there’s something growing in my chest that just can’t come out, I can’t breathe properly, and it’s just not right. I need something, just to tell me that I didn’t dream up an alternative life I thought I had but I didn’t, not at all, not in the slightest. Because I came back to something I thought I knew but I didn’t, not at all, not in the slightest.

Come back to me, my sense of purpose.

381: insomnia

Thoughts that appear at 5am in the morning;

• The sooner you learn to accept people for who they are, the less trouble you will have with yourself. Why is everyone so worked up over things they cannot control?
• Why does this happen every week? I shouldn’t have drunk that coffee.
• I think I might be in love with the Eurasian guy who appears on 超级星光大道 to PK the contestants. But obsessions come and go, anyway.
• Something I read while filling my time with reports of serial killers (don’t ask): There are Mr. Rights, and then there are Mr. Right Nows. Mr. Right Now is the guy you think you’re in love with when you’re seventeen. Then you get knocked up and are forced to get married and suddenly it’s too late, when Mr. Right comes along. (And Mr. Right Now may just kill you if you leave.)
• There’s really just no way I’m ever going to appear in the morning bright and chirpy and eyebag-less. It’s a chronic failing. I like sleep. I like to have my own time. I like mornings. But to have all three is kind of impossible.
• I want to sleep now.

380: you are not welcome here

My friend says this is the best movie he’s ever watched in his life, and I think I can see why, even though we see the same things differently. For me, it was good — one of the better ones, in a long while — but it might have been because I had to sit through with a pounding headache that changed my perspective.

(Spoilers ahead; don’t read if you haven’t watched District 9.)

379: 可惜时光不会逗留，转眼飘走

It always strikes me as somewhat strange, the way age changes and defies logic. Over time, the wrinkles appear and the cheeks sag. Voices become rustier, more hoarse, tired from years of screaming at children. Movements are slower, the legs stiffen, backs bending increasingly over the weight of dreams. Recently there have been so many movies dealing with age and loss, as if the two must come together, but increasingly one accepts that the two are necessarily inseparable. With time comes loss comes age, and a painful process of maturity; age becomes wisdom becomes regret.

378: and when the storm comes, hold me close

There are few people I can listen to as readily as you, knowing always that you will have something worth hearing. Even though you’ve come — and you’ve gone — quite a few times, you’re here and I’m here and nothing changes. As you waltz back into my life I’m beginning to realise that you’d never really left, and the distance that separates us is painful and wide and altogether too long. I was surprised there was anything left between us, and not just anything, but something, in a way that is strange and unfathomable.

377: people are like electrons

376: if it’s too loud, you’re too old

Happenings of the past (last) week of holidays;

375: some other beginning’s end

Tomorrow will mark the first week in which I lost the last three years of my life. Funny that that’s the way I chose to say it, when it could have been said any other way, but I suppose in a sense it’s true, because it’s three years’ worth of memories that I can never get back. This includes all the pictures and all the music I transferred over from my old desktop when I first changed over, some of which I’ve had since 1999; files which are now irreplaceable and I will never get them back even if I try. It also includes years’ worth of memories and letters that I wrote and never sent; always assuming that whatever happened, things would last forever. But that doesn’t happen, not even in cold November rain. Everything’s gone, but my heart’s still hanging on. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but I feel less aggrieved by all these losses than I should be, considering the amount of time and emotion I’ve invested in it.

Everything is the same, but the inside will change. Not that this counts for much because I’ve changed everything possible about it since the day I had it, except this final part (which, now put in, will render it totally and completely different from who it used to be) — brand new everything, now. Totally and wholly unrecognisable. Except not, because I could have just bought a new computer, but instead I’m sentimental as fuck.  Strange how I am trying to make it into a metaphor for my life, but it’s not so far off the truth anyway.

Ever since I got back everything’s been dying on me. It’s probably a sign. Funny also how I always end up spending my final year in school alone.