Goals to do before the next semester.

1. Finish this fucking semester with ease and no regrets.

2. Get a blazer

3. Get a pair of boots

4. Get abs

5. Go on a day trip out of state

6. Paint something new

7. Clean up room and wardrobe

8. Do something about my hair

9. Get myself either a book on basic constructions or the Neufert's Architect Data

10. Bake something fancy

This was meant to be a list.

Single worded titles, enigmatic endings, lots of hyphens, lots of semi-colons: for anyone who has ever at least read my blog once, we could easily agree that I am quite the dramatist. And I don't quite mean this in the good kind of way.

It's been too often I pursued myself in the metaphor of a baffling ocean, or the midnight space - but sometimes, just - where does the point go? I send my words off in a rocket, shipped away into a millennium of empty time frames, hoping someone would pick them up and return them to me.

No one ever does. There, they are left to brace the nothingness - barely moving, barely breathing. A mission aborted the moment it set foot away from my fingertips. 

So for once, let's not be poetic.

Forget the adjectives, forget the metaphors, the hyperbolas, the crescendo of speech, or the pin drop pause - the point here is certain - always has been, and perhaps always will be.

Life sucks. 

Life really fucking sucks.

Excuse my French - my horrible accent, my inexcusable pronunciation. I am only a linguist of the language I make up in my mind. All these other words are simply foreign to me.

Excuse me.

Excuse me while I kick the pebbles my toes grow too fond to stumble upon; excuse me while scream into my pillow in the quarter-past midnight; excuse me while I gawk and awe at my month old scars on my right leg; excuse me while I tear up in this desolate corner, here.

Yes. Do excuse the drama.

Ignore the masks that hang on my wall, the costumes in my wardrobe, the microphone on my dresser. Forget they exist. Forget the color of my skin, and hair. Forget the sound of my voice.

For I am a play still being written, I am gestures of a hand that forms silhouettes in the spotlight, I am heavy red curtains drawing down with dust, I am - wait - I am growing poetic again.

Excuse my English - my disregarded articulation, my blundered grammar.

What I mean is: life sucks.

It truly, truly does.

Bury me, God forbid. Cast me away in a coffin built from the wood of my own madness - bolt me shut with the needles that stagger the silver line between my lips. Wrap me in a drying canvas, painted fashionable in the pallet of my favorite colors.

Life sucks, and I'd tell you why.

I'd make a list in fact, that is, if only I'd know what to fill the numbers with. If only I'd know how to pick up the pieces of my shattered thoughts - I would puzzle them right, like a cheesy love quote - I'd draw diagrams, of problems and solutions, and photograph it to hang on my clipboard.

Yes. If only I knew.

Now excuse me, again. I have a stutter to trip over.

Weightless.

I have so much better words to write about in the seat of a moving car, than when I am staring at a paper or a screen. How diminishing my inspiration to be looking back at their impatient eyes.

There is just something very eloquent about the passing drivers, the rolling clouds, and the tress that run away too quickly.

(Here's an attempt at recreating said essay from this morning's drive) (TBE if I remember more)

--

Sometimes I hate it so much just simply being around you.

How you make me feel so small beneath your gaze, as you look down upon me. How short I become, how shallow my waters: from the surface where it ripples you see through me to the core of my sandy dunes, and polluted sea bed.

You are the deepest trench of the deepest ocean: how petty it is that the smallest of you that crashes to the shore becomes only almost of what I fully am.

I hate being around you.

You, with the world you boast on your shoulders, the past you gloat on your smile, and the future you praise in your eyes - how wonderful, as compared to I.

What about me?

Me, I am nothing.

Only a fickle breath to breeze that wipes off trees, and rooftops; I am merely a whisper whose words forever remain unspoken; I am so very little to you. 

When you tip the scale with the weight of your poise and your glisten, on the other end, I dangle desperately, fumbling my fingers over its creaking edge.

I am as light as a feather. I am bustled away by the wind that blows, landing only softly on the shoulders of strangers, only to be shrugged away: to dance again in the whistles I am unable to battle.

All this, while you - darling, you are everything: the galaxy and the universe. And if not the purples and blues of the atmosphere, then you are at least the sun: how you orbit the planets, how you gravitate the Earth, and how you may offer light to even the nighttime by lending yourself to the moon.

You - you are a proud lion, with glorious mane, and golden body - your roar quakes my gravity.

How can I ever be anything compared to you?

This feather, whom you may pick and prod at, and peel away my furry bits, to leave me bare and naked like a fish bone: seamless, and almost blinded - you see me only to pry me away from your blistered throat, and toss me to the floor, to clatter to absolutely no noise at all.

How small I am.

If I were to get lost in space, there would be no end. Or no beginning either. Only empty wandering amid the air I cannot even breath in; levitating in the world you have created around me.

The stars may be so far, and seem so small: but no matter how close I may ever get, I always lie a little further. Because there is no greater distance, than the silence we have, between you and I.

Greed.

I think you may call me a masochist.

To indulge in pain: it must be a curious thing. What a pique to simply question why.

Truly, to answer you, I do not know.

But there is just something so pleasant about the stench of a tragedy - the growing ill that creeps through your nostrils, the pungent air that fills your lungs, the gagging sensation that taunts your throat with its almost ivy-like poison.

The little things are always better exaggerated.

Name me insane, if you please, I do not mind - in fact, you may perhaps be quite true. Insane it is, the thought to expand the realms of reality with the strategy of a long worded poem.

Aren't we rash, disgraceful things, us writers are?

How indignant to spill the language of a simple stutter with colors we bothered not to mingle; How bold the canvas becomes, with its reds, and blues, and yellows - how they do not shadow, nor do not fade, but merely blind you with horrible vivaciousness.

Sometimes even I stun myself.

When I am slouched over an unfinished paragraph, my fingers irking to dance away with the words of a galaxy I have not yet even met, the air purposes to still me with a pause, holds my breath for a moment that passes so quick, I fail to count the seconds, then puzzles my eyes around the room.

Here, in utter honesty, I often grow uncertain - wary, almost - of whether my story presents to you either a novel of fact or fiction. Though you may find me boasting a slaughtered heart, laced beneath my essays - I truly do not know.

You see, to indulge in pain is a curious thing

Curious, but indeed a habit so keen to my kind.

Words that stand proud with agony and distress are what we consider the better. We plant our sorrows the same way the farmers plant their lives within the soil of their homes.

It is the growth of gold we can toy our knuckles with, inside our gaping pockets; it is the shingles that shelter our heads from the drizzles - it is what makes us.

But alas, as do all things favorable: it is also the coming to a doom we only create.

It is an evil - a shadow man of whom I met as a child. To he, I surrendered the furthest musings of my mind to.

Yes. Name me insane, but it is the slow death that tastes as sweet as honey - and I savor every golden tear that coats my cracking lips; licking my tongue almost erotically, so that I do not lose even the slightest of it away, in the dripping faucet of reality's limbo.

Musings, Musings, Musings...

(I write the worst when I'm not diving in depression. Excuse me)


As always, it's 4 in the morning, my playlist sings something in its usual fashion of melancholy, my coffee is cold and stale, my stomach is churning from the lack of dinner and my nose has just finished bleeding over several sneezing fits.

I have delayed work on my left, but a conscience that ignores it completely - all I do have in mind is a half-ass'ed love story I can't quite word out.

I'm a terrible writer, you see.

I'll never be able to write myself a love story. I know this because I've tried - many times, in fact. I always come out sounding too cheesy or too shallow, as if love only meant being nice; or as if it were something pretty, or rare.

Love isn't rare. And love isn't at all merely nice, or pretty. Such a foul take on the movement of love - especially that god-awful phrase "I love you," people so feebly exchange. It is a dreadful sentence that lacks an array of adjectives.

What does that even mean - this word, love? If I were to think of you, the word love would be the last one on my mind, because I simply do not, and cannot. The word love means nothing. It does not in the nearest way explain at all the way I feel about you.

So no, I do not love you.

I so-much-more-than-that you.

But how does one even say that? How can one say you so-much-more-than-that somebody?

There should be a better word in the dictionary to say love better than love. How can we tell people that they're so more to us than what our vocabulary limits us to? Because I know for a fact, I do not just simply love you, and you are not at all just something nice or pretty to me.

How can I say that you are the most wonderful human being I have ever met; that you don't shine light nor grow my blessings, but instead that you are.

How can I say that when I sleep each night I pray to meet you in astral space, because there, I get to see the insides of you - I get to wrap my fingers around your heart, and kiss your thoughts and float in your ambitions?

How can I tell you that you are my everything: the moon, the sun, the stars, the galaxy, and the universe; tell you that you are my atmosphere, and even just the smallest memory of you - a moment's glimmer of your eyes, your skin, or your silver hair - I breathe in like oxygen to keep myself alive?

How can I say that you are so much more beautiful than perfection, and that each misalignment are constellations I would love to trace with my fingers each morning I'd wake up - because all I want, is to wake up next to you.

I want to tell you that your eyes are like daggers and my face is scarred like a horror-fiction film antagonist, and sometimes I bite the cuts on my lips so that I can taste the way you look at me.

I want to tell you that every time you touch my skin, or say my name, I drown in your voice as if it were the Indian Ocean - that you ripple me with waves and currents I am too greedy to fight against; that I get intoxicated with the taste of salt that fills my lungs as if it were a party drink.

How can I say that?

There are too many things I can only wish to word out in novel, or blurt out in an irrational conversation; things I wish I could tell you before your face, so that I can watch how your skin turns hues from the words I may finger-paint you with.

Like how I want to tell you that I need you.

If there were a word better than need, that is exactly how I would - just like if there were a word better than love, or nice, or pretty, because you are all that, and more.

Though I probably need you more than I love you - for without you, I am only but blank corners and empty spaces - I am words that carry nothing but the weight of themselves for being used too much or too little by everyone and no one all at the same time.

With you I become full.

But - how can I ever tell you?

"

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


Joel: I can't see anything that I don't like about you.

Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.

 Joel: Okay.

Clementine: Okay.

This and That.

Long paragraphs are my favorites. I love how they manage to describe so much in what would seem like a single breath-span. It says a lot about confidence too - how it seems to brag about the nearing obvious with flourishing lengths of language.

--

What a familiar scent in the air.

The crisp breath of a creeping dawn, the damp sweat of dew painting chilly images outside my living room window; My sketchbook lies open-faced by the end of my elbow, pens scattered, and the tune of a song I've been playing on repeat over and over again hum silently from this brightly lit screen that now seems to only sting my eyelids with whines and irritated murmurs.

This is a familiar scent indeed.

I can only wonder how many times it has been 5.30 in the morning, with this same image of myself, deeply slouched, tickling over my keyboard as if these were keys to a baby grand - the sounds it makes, full of its tip-tap's, fill my desolate corner with only echoes of words that will not speak themselves.

These are words that do not demand to be read, but only offer - like silver platters, they are open arms, with fork and spoon on the ready - take as you may, decline as you please - lick the flavors I may offer you, swirl the wine of my thought 'round your tongue zealously, or then spit me out to not sink yourself, intoxicated by the poison it is aged with.

Yes. This familiar scent of almost-passionate writing has claimed residence in me for so long, I often times don't even notice it's there. I may raise my nose once in a while and flare my nostrils in search of something new - perhaps something bitter, or morose to inhale - but easily enough I find this: a subtle smell, lulled with a dank sweetness: like roselle, or chrysanthemum.

I call this comfort.

Though sometimes I find it beneath the bend of someone else's arm - there, I indulge in the sniffs of the owner's long days, his warm showers and tedious phone calls, and the nights he has either slept too well or too little. Yes, he is hot cups of spiced chocolate on the days that's skies would not stop sobbing.

He is a quiet wonder - the candle lit road to a bigger fire. Ahead is the hearth that embraces my face; the kind that kisses away frostbites, and licks blusters into whirlwinds.

I imagine myself many years from now: it is 5.30 in the morning. The room resonates with the tip-tap's of a keyboard - perhaps a one that is shiny and new - while the sun is rubbing his eyes of dust, ready to rise from his bed behind the horizon.

To my right is my candle light, scented with further age, with a love that has grown both battered and bettered - he smells like an alarm clock waiting to ring; Like groans and toast on the dining table. He feels like a heartbeat; Like rough stubble over my wrinkling cheek; Like tossed sheets.

I would almost call it comfort.

Though comfort, then, would a be word I'd only stutter. It would be a word I'd have only an urge to give, but always pull back to hide beneath my over-sized t-shirt, shy by the way it calls itself true.

No. It would be so much more than that.

Because alongside that familiar scent in the air - then, I would call it sanctuary.

Lust.

Caramel affogato. One word: amazing. There is simply nothing better than the marriage of ice cold textures, with hot-off-the-stove kinds. So fabulous. There really are no words to describe this more than what already comes to mind: bittersweet perfection. 

Okay, yes, I admit, the camera has made damage to my blog posts. You can't blame me really. When you can take pretty high-def photos of foods, and yourself and your best friend - you should. 

I promise I'll write properly for the next post! It's just that.. I am getting quite tired of writing such indignant things - and gosh, those are the only things I am actually able to write about. All the happier, good things in life come so difficult for me to paragraph. 

So thus.. yeah, pictures speak a thousand words, no? 

Isn't he adowables (embarrass him buahaha) (poke cheek)

I knew I loved you the moment I met you.

Delayed.

So I've been keeping lots of things on hold lately. It's the month's motion just passing through, I'd assume, surfacing all these strange obscure emotions I thought I had left behind. Insecurities is a bitch.

Oh well. Moving on: I am a week late due of my blog post to Penang. How was it, you ask? Well, aside from the awful social integration among my society - it was pretty swell.

I know from my obvious indulgence of petty emotions, and my lack of time in anything else besides my internet, boyfriend, and work: I come to seem like a non-adventurous kid - y'know, the kind who likes tea over coffee.

As almost true as it is - it really isn't. I love walking, I love the outdoor's fresh air (or, as fresh as it gets that is, here in Malaysia), and I love sight-seeing. I may be a horrible sport in actual physical activities (cough cough fucking Escape Park like climbing and balancing shit), but I can't help but love to just.. roam, once in a while.

Getting lost is a hobby I have so out of reach, but something I would so dearly wish to acquaint to.

Yes, this little socially retarded introvert likes to see the world. My eyes may be chinky, but I see quite well beyond the actual image of the naked sight. I am the dreamer, after all.

Let's talk about this for a second: Before coming over to Kapitan, we dropped by a few of the "best places in town," but nothing came to impression until this. By all means this is the best tandoori chicken I have had by far - and I've had my share, mind you. This chicken, with it's little tray of sour cream by the side is... amazing. And to pair such great flavors next to a garlic butter naan - heaven. 

I know there probably isn't any purpose to me writing about it, but I really just felt it deserves the praise. Thanks Kapitan. I will be back again soon.

Okay, I think that's all from me. Thanks Penang for being such a good host to this little introvert who needs a slice of the world's enormous sized cake once in a while. I miss the broke life of street wandering, getting lost, blistering feet and blazing sun. Gone too soon - it's back to sleepless studio nights again. :')

I'll be back again Penang, promises Munif, sure he'd give me the best days of my life. Well I don't expect to be disappointed. 

And after that: Bangkok, please.

Tree house.

(impromptu) (bullshit) (TBE)


There are many kinds of simple.

Simple life, simple words, simple gestures, simple love. You can't always quite tell if things are just as simple as you'd thought. Not until you're standing on the edge of a cliff, and you can't feel your legs anymore.

It's simple like that: you're afraid. Afraid of what lies beneath the trees you barely see; afraid of the fog bed you are struggling to breathe. Beneath you are rocks that only seem to slip away from your feet.

I remember when I was little, I used to pile my buckets upside down, convinced I have built a sandcastle. Now, I stain my fingers with the ink of a concrete dream but everything only does really just feel like sand.

All I see is the nightfall that rolls down its shades over the beach, depleting of its people; And the storm that grumbles a famished roar in its belly full of clouds. They tease at me with drizzles on my nose, wanting surely to devour me - smack their greased lips between me.

Now all I see is everything I can only almost reach out to. Things that even begin to lose their 'almost's.'

Here, in this treetop house, in a city I still struggle to wrap my fingers around - I am my just born self, desperate for the nectar of life from a mother's bosom.

Here, she is the sky: the moon, the sun, the stars - everything I can still look up to, when my walls are only bare with confinement. They are like steel bars: they are ropes laced like a prisoner's bedroom, dangling head over heels above me.

I am walking only but a thin line across broken sandcastles.

It was never really the storm that brought down my golden fort of pebbled sand. I did not know this then - but I do now. Now, I know the rage of the baffling sea that is ramming in a march; massacre under the galloping hooves.

My only dream for a simple love is swept away now in the air dank of salt; currents filled with bloated bodies and seashells that always lie to the shore, like a false lover, saying that they will stay.

But nothing ever does. Not really.

And that's a simple thing - but that's the worse kind.

5 Cents.

Not enough
I am a glass half-filled
I am a plate unfinished
I am letters in a drawer that remain forever unsent
I am friendships that do not last

Not enough
When the moon has sunken, and my feet still callus over the floor's rough marble
My hands still wilt over cutlery, or blades that cannot stop cutting
My eyelids kissing over and over again, begging to make love to sleep
I hear the torment of the hours that pass too quickly
This will not matter come sunrise
This will not matter come success
For me: I do not quite know success
Only battered breaths, and bruised fingertips, and a slouching chair that swallows me in
This is the only best that I may get

It's been too long that I forget how it feels for my spine to rest upon blankets again
It's been too long since I managed a smile
I have dug graves and tunnels for my arrival here
The warmth of the open air draws a deep sigh
But still, it is not enough
The words of those that share something so unrequited blare in my ears
How my whisper of forgiveness is whipped at with anger
Pleads of this slave's need murmurs under the numbness of my tongue

I was built as with any other man, with arms, and muscles, and veins
A head that will not stop thinking, eyes that will not stop blinking
I am no different from those I see outside the windows of me

But I am not enough
I am an image that hasn't quite finished loading
The unread page that is stuck to its paperback end
I am the lost 5 cent coin from everyone's torn pockets
I am only shattered glass that cannot be puzzled together
Parts of me lie dangling desperately onto the sharp edges of my yesterdays
Clung to tree branches, or molding picket fences

Sometimes I'd like to think that this wasn't how I was made
Only a result of being careless and immature to the ups and downs of the world
That maybe I had already given away too much
And I am now left with not enough more to give.

The Gravity of a Loop.

My head is spinning.

It seems that lately it always is. Maybe that's why I've been so urged to write in these past few days. It is definitely easier to write when you're wrung with a headache. So many thoughts bursting pressure at the walls of my skull, demanding to be released - to explode in a frenzy of tantrums and tears; of begs and confessions.

My head is still spinning.

I hear the noises of my mind ringing so violently, like high pitched bells, my eardrums can no longer heed the pain of it anymore. I try almost desperately to shut my eyes to imagine myself in a safer place, but only God knows that there is no place safer than out here, because inside here it's worse.

When my eyelids are closed, and my lashes curtain my sight, I see things further than that when I am wide awake. I feel my pupils shrink to the size of freckles, I feel the veins creep through my sockets, so swollen, and so filled with agony that it paints the imagery of things so demonic.

My mind is no safe zone, no sanctuary, no place for sanctity or security, but instead a place without walls; without grass, or trees; without pillars, or a roof over its head; not a place to call a home - there is no water to quench the thirst that nearly kills me, and no food to fill this belly that starves.

It is not a battlefield - or if it were, than it was one that had long lost its soldiers to the blood of arrows and catapults - for this is a barren land, with air that cannot fill the lungs, and a scent that cannot leave my limbs.

Mind you, there are no monsters here. No shadows, or claws, or shattering teeth, which in fact, I would appreciate the company of.

Here, there is only me.

Only a sky in the tint of amber, the floor-bed made of blistering stones, the eerie sound of silence, and the warmth of my own breath.

I am not caged, not shackled, but here am free to move to no where: to get lost in the infinity of the place that does not exist, to repeat my steps for years that will never pass, and to remember things I can only keep on seeing. Though even so, I feel like a prisoner.

I am held captive in the dreariness of nothing, where my warden is my own self.

I have the key to leave. I have the key to let go of all of this, at simply any moment.

But alas I am a fool, and I believe I often misplace it. I leave it in the pockets of stranger, in a friend's locked drawer, under my bedroom pillow, or more than naught, in my lover's eyes.

I leave my key in places I assure I'd come back to: in places I thought I could almost call mine, but forget so easily, that I am too fickle to ever own anything.

..

There is no ending to the muse of my writings. I can always go on with the tragedy of my life, with words that fill the spaces of endeavors so perfectly, but I simply cannot find the point of where it will end - because, will it ever?

Most probably not. Most probably I have so long lived in my mind, that my reality is coming close to collision. That now I am free to walk both lands, unbarred, and unlimited, but only endlessly to the goals of no where.

Allow me to trail off this post unfinished now, and leave my being to wander the thoughts that I can barely word in paragraphs. Allow me, adieu.

Stars, Unfinished.

Stars.
Tracing constellations with our fingers.
Books. Reading pages out loud.
Your voice.
And nothing more.
Sidewalk drawings and paper plane smiles.
These are things, I can only almost remember.
Shadows. How they talked.
Dreams. How they felt.
Voices.
Your voice, and nothing more.
The sun tilting over the horizon
The ocean crashing the sand
The grass dancing in the wind
People's footsteps on stairways
Clouds grow midnights in the daytime
You
Your voice
Nothing more
Hands. Teachers. Friends. Mothers.
More hands.
Lovers. Painters. Sinners.
Paperback books.
Your voice.
So much more.
Water.
Pouring hot liquid over dented skin
Drawings lines with cold blades
Blood.
Cuts.
Bruises.
Why?
You said surrender.
I said please.
Blankets now.
Pillow forts, and folded sheets.
Nightlights and flashlights and tail lights.
Bedtime stories under quakes of thunder
Tree leaves shedding
Rain kissing our noses
All those sidewalk drawings, and paper plane smiles



TBE.

Unedited.

Sometimes life feels like a ticking clock

I am standing quietly at the edge of this creaking wooden chair
Tipping its legs back and forth with balls of my callusing feet
I am reminded of times when I threw my head back
Let my thick hair brush in the winds and stroke the sand on the ground
As my body hummed, in the same way it does now: tipping back and forth

Sometimes I worry when my time will come
I write down numbers over peeling wallpaper
Scraping down hardened cement of age and time with cracking fingernails
I am staining these walls with more thank chalk
Eerie light creeps through the gape of the brick
Like water seeping through my skin like a sponge

I still recall the way they laughed at me
When I traced my words in tears that dried up in eyebags that scarred
My skin still ripping off from where I remembered they laid not so long ago
I still see the torn paper slithering down the bedroom door
I thought I would win this
But all I got, was only losing
Like losing poker chips at a gamble of a full barrel
I lost my pride and my dignity to pointing fingers and sounds of joy

Now I fear the smiles and the way breath dances through people's lungs like that
Now I fear corners, and white lights of silver linings
Only the best comfort ever does lie in the motion of a pendulum
I never get seasick, no matter how brash the waves may plummet me
No matter how sunken the well of my chest
Because I have long purged the arteries and the veins of my body's fulcrum

I threw away important parts
Crucial points, and pressure spots
I threw them, like a skipping stones over calm rivers
I watched them ring the water's surface with ripples
The only lines I ever do draw, for now I am only an empty canvas
Reach out your fingers and touch me
You will not feel the weave, or the grain of this fabric
Paint upon me, and watch the colors slide

People call it hollow
I call it how it's supposed to be
Because when you wear your heart on a sleeve, you lose too much
And not to mention, you get your favorite satin dirty

So yes, here I stand
Pushing back and forth the single leg of this chair
I am almost falling, gravity reminds me of the face of the solid ground
You may imagine otherwise, but there is no noose around my neck
Only a chair with legs, dangling upon it as if it were what keeps me alive
I feel the splinters of the unfinished wood spit new wounds, and lick old ones on both my soles
I feel this see-saw motion come to almost a stop
All right before I become crooked nose, and torn lip
You see
I don't run away from pain;
I run into.

Shut.

Like underwater, I am inches away from air, grasping, gasping for the clean cut of the water's surface.

TBE.

So.

A pendulum is the best metaphor to life.

The way it swings from one side to the other; the way it slows down to a stop, only to regain momentum at either both a push or pull; the way it hangs so lightly under the quiet tension of the string, but weighs so much more to be carried alone.

The pendulum, much like life, proves its generous share of ups and downs. It demonstrates the highs and lows, the almost-theres, the in-betweens, the half-baked, the 360 degree turns, and the blatant fact of just how important gravity is to us.

It's always a lot easier to indulge in the latter to the good. Hereby, perhaps sometimes I tend to take the better for granted.

But no, not today.

Because today is different. Today, I felt - feel - different.

Days like these are rare to come by. So uncommon has it become for me to feel so comfortable, so at peace and acceptance in the likeliness of my own skin. In fact, it seems almost rather.. alien to me.

But I suppose my pessimism deserves this - what I would call - slap in the face every once in a while. It's nice to know that there are silver linings over dark clouds. 

Or say, in better words: it's nice to know there is someone out there who genuinely cares for you.

I don't see it often, so how more would I believe in such?

But today is special. 

But then again, no. 

..

Maybe it's just you. Maybe you're the special one.

I write. I wont say I'm any good at it, but it's a passion I love dear, and a solution to the sadness I cannot quite express. Words aren't something I possess a power of - it is in fact something that has a power over me. They move me, like winds and like seas. They speak to me, beyond those that are actually spoken or written. There is a place in this heart for words that mean what I do.

"I'm afraid to tell you how bad it is," are the kind of words that cut so deep, I actually remember the sting of my skin being ripped apart, because only God knows how many times I've had these words stuttering beneath my breath, as I lie to the faces of the people I love.

Fuck.

It's Hot Here.

Welp, this is it.

These are the best of times, these are the worst of times. 

At 19 years old, one would assume it to be the prime time of youths: a time of great fun, a time less needed of thought, a time of finding oneself, and a time to always look back at with a smile. 

And yet, here I am, playing the latter role to the quote of the Tale of Two Cities, spending my so-called glory days, moping over a laptop with a battery life that slowly depletes to zero, and agonizing my dread into words.

I assume I must be fun to point and laugh at, for always being such a sore thumb to the presumption of society.

What a fool I am, a fact so obvious. Though it is only human nature of me to wish for better, as I simply cannot help but question why.

Where do I  go so awfully wrong to be placed in such a monotonous rank of this hierarchy?

Is it that I am blessed so un-pretty? Is it that my tongue cannot boast to be bilingual? Is it that I ponder foreign ideas, or that my opinions are un-matter-of-fact-ish, and unworthy?

I lick my finger desperately for the taste of an answer, but I can't quite seem to place the spot of which it may lie.

I am helpless against the fate that has paralyzed me, so bed-ridden, without even the will to stutter denial.  

I am without a friend.

And isn't that such a marvel? How so easily I fit into the creases of the words, "loner," or more so blatant, yet true all the same, "loser."

Shouldn't I be laughing, and having a - what do they call it? - blast with a company too?

Alas, no is the word I hear far too often, it cannot even sting any longer, but only numbs me. 

The wheel has stirred its ways; the winds has taken hold of both the currents and my sails, for I am not there, but here, in this quiet room alone, with its front doors that seem to bang to the entrance of nobody - here, I am writing words that are only born to whither. 

Lashing out to the only place I feel safe - a blog so empty of visits and reviews - I come to wonder sometimes, if anybody will ever hear the echo in my paragraphs.

Because if you would only pay more attention: I swear you'd hear me screaming.

Raya.

Selamat hari raya! Oh, what a long two week delay it's been before I can actually wish my fellow readers (aka, tumbleweeds). And yes, more pretentious pictures. Why? Because - again, I can.

Spiced hot chocolate and ribena something-something, from Grafa. And soon enough, you'll see me posting hot chocolate from Rome! And brownies from Baked, New York!

Soon, my friends... soon..

Second Trial.

So I thought I'd give this food photography thing another try. No harm to that, right? (Aside from the evidently collateral damage to my weighing scale, of course). This is probably the 4th time I've made this cake in the past month - yesterday itself being my third - and still we can't stop ourselves from rounds and rounds of second helpings.

It's a rather basic dish - no particular culinary prowess needed, but it looks and smells so absolutely amazing, it'd seem like hours' work of efforts. See how pretty it is! And it smells almost like a fusion of spring and fall. Turning it over, and getting the first whiff of both the fresh oranges, and the spicy warmth of the cinnamon and nutmeg is always such a delight.

I can't say I have it perfected, but I've tried my best. So here's the recipe for all my fellow readers - or, that is, fellow tumbleweed friends who seem to have accumulated in this, well, ghost town of a blog.

Mind you though, the cake is quite sweet. But it goes ravishingly well with the combat of a hot long black. And yes, you can eat the rinds of the orange once it's baked, but it will taste slightly bitter-sweet, if I may say, which, personally, is my favorite thing about this cake.

Orange Upside-Down Cake (9x9)

2 oranges (I used naval)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup + 3 tbsp softened butter

1-1/2 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

2 eggs (separated)

1/2 cup milk (for this particular cake in the picture, I used evaporated milk)

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp fresh orange juice

Zest of 1 orange

2 cinnamon sticks

Grated nutmeg

Pre-heat oven to 180C. In oven-proof pan, melt 3 tbsp butter over medium-low heat. Add brown sugar and let dissolve and caramelize. Add cinnamon sticks and 2 tbsp of orange juice then allow to simmer, for about 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat, arrange thin orange slices to cover bottom of pan and sprinkle with grated nutmeg, and bring back to heat: let simmer for another 1-2 minutes.

For the cake, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. In separate bowl, beat 1/2 cup of butter with white sugar until light and fluffy. Add in yolks and vanilla, beat until fully incorporated. Beat in the dry ingredients in three separate batches, alternating with the liquids (milk and orange juice, where of which, I add the orange juice as the third and final batch of liquids). Fold in the zest.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks, then fold into batter, again, in three separate batches. Be careful not to over-mix, but make sure that all the egg whites are fully incorporated.

Pour and spread cake batter over prepared pan with oranges. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Allow to rest in pan for about 5 minutes before turning over. Serve warm (with coffee!).

Le burp!

Two.

It's been so long since I've blogged. I feel crippled, struggling so desperately just to puzzle out my thoughts into words. Even my fingers are feeling rather gawky.

Well, lo and behold, the long awaited break to my absence. 

And ah, once again, the bitterness of 2am's midnight moon brings me here.. to solitude, I must say.

(Blows pixel dust away) 

I've been troubled lately by so many vivid dreams. Dreams, of which, that even as I awake, I can still feel the tingle and shudder of the this's and that's. Each word, each touch, each grey or purple sky, each inhale and exhale provoke me.

As if my dreams weren't just illusions - not thoughts, nor fragments of the mind, but memories. It was so tangible - so real.

I recall last night that I dreamt of my past affair. It wasn't a dream of choice, obviously, but it went by, with both its hues and its melodies, the same as it would any of my yesterdays. 

I dreamt I bumped his shoulder, and I dreamt I kissed his lips. Then I dreamt that my throat hurt - that it bled, and I swallowed down every stain, and that because I had probably swallowed too much, my stomach churned with agony.

I dreamt that he spoke to me: that he spoke to me with words so violent, it damaged me like a crossfire of bullets and arrows - even nightfall drew in, and it rained with all the roars of thunder and lightning.

I then dreamt I spoke to him.

When I awoke, there were no tears to trace rings around my eyes, nor any blood down the cracks of my lips, but everything tasted similarly stale, salty, and bitter all at once.

His breath, reeking of such poisonous promises, was still ringing, like sirens in my ear. It was a noise so endlessly deafening, I couldn't get rid of it, no matter how hard I screamed shut in silence.

The mere thought of him makes the remorse of me bellow eerily with shame. 

Yes, behind these mirrors, and deep-set eyes, my regrets are an untamed beast.

So I am now brought to believe that my dreams were far more than what they seemed to be. Not dreams - no - but a premonition, perhaps.

The many days I have been tossed and turned, and rough-housed in and out of my sheets, through the imminent nights of my weary sleep, I presume a deep irking to be bashing at the gates of my subconscious.

And I think they call this unfinished business.

Yawn.

I am so tired. My feet hurt, and I've got a huge throbbing gash on my thigh. How typical.

My second semester of architecture has officially ended (minus of course the fact that I still have a portfolio due by raya). Hurrah! No more explanation needed.

But alas, no semester goes down without its regrets (perhaps I have too many, but -). Guh, things I've lost throughout the sem: (and yes, we all have our share of pointless blog posts. Let me be!)

1. My stapler. Which I just bought right before the semester ended. Argh!

2. Mom's scissors to potong ikan. I apologize mother :'(

3. My purple beanie!!

4. All my pens. I don't know where the heck they always go flying off to.

5. My yellow cutter. I broke one, bought another one, then lost it. Argh! It had my name on it, god dangit.

6. A friend. You know who you are :(

Nostalgia.

Ever since I was a little girl, I've never really been apart of the crowd. I guess there are just some things about ourselves that can simply never change.

And I am not complaining. I think I am glad to still be me.

"I'm fine."

You know what's the saddest thing?

When you work so hard, and it all ends up meaning nothing.

You try and try again, building a sand castle of all your hopes and dreams, with the palms of your bare hands. It isn't easy, scraping and bruising your skin here and there. Blood stains your growing castle, but it doesn't matter, for as long as it stands erect for you to ogle in the future.

You're pushing, and shoving, and digging, and patting, and meshing, and pressing. Sweat is getting your forehead damp, and you're losing a lot of blood now, and your legs are cramping, and your back aches, and you just want to sit down and sip some water, but you can't and you don't because you really want this to be successful - you really want it to work.

But nothing ever seems to go the way you plan it to.

Suddenly it begins to rain. Suddenly the tide rises in. Suddenly the soil is too soft. Suddenly the wind is too strong. Suddenly the crabs decide to bite your feet. Suddenly your hands get numb.

Your sand castle crumbles.

You try to save it, thrusting your body 'round the falling art. Grasping and grabbing and nudging and pouncing at the grains that don't wish to stay in place any longer.

And before you know it.. the sand has been washed away completely, gone with the sway of the waves. Dust of its remains blow gently into your eyes and hair. The rain bathes your hand and feet clean.

And there you sit: palms still open, as if ready to catch something. Mouth still agape, blood still running down your elbows, breath still shallow. You sit there, as if there should have been something before you - a trophy, a sculpture, a creation, or possession somehow.

But nothing.

There's nothing in front of you. Nothing around you even, but the crashing tide.

You're alone, with only your emotions. Shock, pain, disappointment, anger.

And there's nothing you can do now. You can't start over, you can't rebuild, you can't pick up any pieces - for all your tools and materials, your puzzle pieces, and scribbled blueprints have gone away with your efforts.

You gave up everything you had for that sand castle - your hopes, your dreams, your passion, your love, your  time, your care, your heart, your soul - you saved nothing for yourself, nothing left in your pockets or up your sleeves.

So that is exactly what you have now: nothing.

And with that, there is also nothing you can do it about it.

You can cry and scream and throw fits and tantrums. You can kick the sand or toss stones into the ocean - but nothing changes.

So you hold back the tears. Struggle against the frown on your face and fight for a smile. Behind your eyelids is a waterfall and beneath your breath are curses.

Now isn't that just the saddest thing?

And sadder yet, that you must clench your fists, after all that has happened, and lie desperately to yourself, saying that everything is okay.

Even when the truth is that it isn't.

It's not okay. Not even in the slightest bit.

All Those That Leave.

Here, at the corner of my room, piled together: a red velvet box, its lid tied in at the top with two ribbons of silver and pink, three used t-shirts that once smelt strongly of someone else, is now washed away with the scent of detergent, having been completely untouched for so long. And in the box, petals of potpourri, polaroid photographs, a letter, and a mug.

I sense a certain kind of sadness, slowly creeping from the bellow of my throat, as I stare silently at that desolate corner.

It is already June. My 19th birthday approaches in simply two weeks time. Now, more vague and distant memories pool in the folds of my thoughts - the sadness growing faster, more intense. The walls of my throat tighten, burdening me with an aching pain of its gaining weight.

 Heaviness.

A tear, slowly trickles down my right cheek, falling off of my chin, staining my night blouse. More begin to follow. The silence of my bedroom is broken with sobs.

Getting softer now, I rub my eyes, dampening my fingers and sleeves. My face stinging with the drying salt of my tears. I inhale.

A smile. A smile, I myself, do not understand.

Perhaps the sadness has gone away. Perhaps this is the calm after the storm.

From downstairs, I have brought up a big black plastic bag - one large enough to fit a fellow human being. With this, I place, gently, the things I had before piled up in the corner.

I tie the bag at its end, and take a few steps back.

Within the bag are the sinews of two people's sentimental hopes - like a caged beast; like sealed lips; like deceitful eyes. Crying and wailing are the words they had once exchanged. The lies, and unfulfilled promises struggle passionately against the black plastic skin that caves it in.

I am uncertain of what fate lies ahead of the souls of this tattered past. Though I know for sure, they will not be here to haunt me any longer.

I have already spoken the words of my goodbye - now here is my gesture.

It was a homicide.

1st June, 2013.

Hit herself in the head over 100 times

34 cuts on her thighs

A rope around her neck

More than 200 cancelled-out phone calls

One song

A million memories

Too many tears shed

Too much blood

Too much pain

This, is reminiscence. 

These Stories.

Insecurities. They are to me, my oldest acquaintance.

Long have I let them hold my hand, as I reluctantly held theirs back. And although it has been forever since we've known each other - and though they know me, flaws and all, inside and out - these insecurities are not my friends.

I have tried endlessly to rid myself of the lingering of their remains. How tired I have become - weary, and drained, in fact - from washing and rinsing away at my now bleaching skin, in often failed attempts at removing the stains of their rivalry.

Though you have been so loyal, and for all those years, have been my only companion: dear Demon, I want you no longer.

I want to be happy without you - to forget you, and all those things you have severed me with. I want to be able to look at my own reflection and be proud of who I see.

I do not want my shoulders to be burdened by you anymore.

Please, leave me, for there is a glimmer of sanctuary awaiting me at the end of this road. But you are heavy, and you are holding me back.

Let me go so I may be.

Let me go so I may be free.

Skinned.

We all have secrets.

For in fact, I have many.

Some of which, are secret to just my friends, others, to also my family, and some too, secret to me. These are truths that are kept, and untold. But keeping silent stories to yourself for too long becomes more than dreadful.

The weight of words behind the knots of sealed lips blister the insides of my mouth. My tongue and cheeks are ripped, and stained with blood. These words so sharp must be let free - released - so that I may heal.

But how shall I begin?

The locks that tie me shut in silence are numb now: It is so difficult to speak those things I promised myself I wouldn't. Though I believe the time has come that I should. It is time, for the least, that I try.

.. (deep breath)

With a heavy sigh, and a bead of sweat across my brow, today I speak these words: My name is Hajer Nasir, and I am a victim of self-harm.

It wasn't something of recent beginning. I have been cutting since the age of 9, as of what I remember.

I was never one to fit in to crowds - always pushed aside, discriminated, and judged. I didn't speak much either; only ever kept my opinions to myself. No one listened to me, and when they did, they wouldn't have liked what they heard.

I am caved, and traumatized by life itself - by the people that walk it, and the things they do that they call living. Everything, and everyone makes me feel worthless.

To understand that you are a smaller being of a larger reality is humble - but to believe you are simply less than the ash in the wind, is simply depressing.

No one should ever stoop so low to my level. No one should ever believe that they mean nothing, and that their mere living is a waste of space, and time - to believe that God made you an error for jokes and laughs or to fill up the empty gaps of an already crowded world.

But all those thoughts of terror were mine.

And if you were to roll up my sleeves, and flip my arm outwards to the paler part of my skin, you would see the scars of my secrets told through the blade of my lonely nights.

They seem faded now, with the growth of my experience to coat over them like paint, but to touch its surface, I can still feel the shudder of the cold knife, grazing softly, deeply into the flesh.

And cutting wasn't the only thing I did.

But the details of that are unimportant.

What matters now is that the truth is no longer a secret. I have opened up my veins, reaped of my dark side, into words that are gestured to the public.

Judge me now, as you always do; sympathize, as you pass me in the hallway.

It matters not to me now, for I have thrown away the fear of people knowing, as I bare myself, stripped and naked to the truth.

Though I am not proud of the things I have done - I am proud that I am still standing, breathing, alive and well, here today, to tell you of the things I have done.

So here you have it. No fancy words, no poetry, no metaphors: just a sad story, of a sad girl, who took 10 years to finally brave her chest to the bullets of an open fire.

(exhale)

My name is Hajer Nasir, and I am a fighter.

When?

Glossy eyes, pale face, swollen cheeks, and dried lips.

Then suddenly, a hand on your shoulder, an assuring smile across their face but still with weariness in their eyes. Their body lowers, to rest themselves beside you - to sit next to you, in the shadow you walled up, that made you feel so alone.

The breeze of the night's cool air; dark ocean waters crash against the dim seashore.

Silence.

This is a moment I remember.

Though broken as I was, it was I that was the giving hand and the words that lent advice. I was sincerity, and I was empathy.

Because it was not my eyes that were bleeding that night.

But most nights when they do - I wish someone would come for me, and just care too.

Rewritten.

"When I saw you, I fell in love. And you smiled because you knew."

I still remember the moment I first crossed paths with you: you were walking down the steps of a crowded hall room, majestic as you were, as I sat bashfully among the jitters of the room's society.

Here, you did not know me, and though your focus was elsewhere, mine was on you, transfixed on the oddity of the silver streak you boasted against the raven of your hair.

It was not soon after, when we met officially. It wasn't in the most romantic of places - it wasn't at a line in a coffee shop, or in an elevator - and you definitely did not ask me about the Smiths.

Although the mood steered far from that of a Nicholas Sparks novel, meeting you was evident. The room was cold, and silent. I can still recall the smell of old cigarettes.

But somehow, to me, our hello's seemed different. Almost as if they were written in scripts, and we spoke them like skilled actors with lines, memorized for a french film.

To talk to you brought me no challenge, and to laugh with you was simpler than anything I'd known. Our conversations were liquid. It was as if I was swimming underwater: your voice was the wave, and I was a lost ripple, floating beneath the buoyancy of your currents.

It didn't take long at all for me to realize that you, though foreign as you may have been to my meeting eye - to me, you were no stranger.

Was it love at first sight?

Perhaps.

Because I believe we've met before - somewhere in a dream I can only faintly remember. It was a quiet dream: desolate and somber. I imagine there might have been a light drizzle, and a swarming fog in the cold. We were both waiting on something we weren't sure was even coming.

But whoever you were to me at the time, you wouldn't leave my mind. I was urged to write about you as I awoke.

The words of my anonymous letter is still stale on the back of my tongue. For you see, we writers do that, you know: write about the things we are truly passionate of - of the things we love.

And in the same way I wrote about you then, here, I am writing about you now.

Because I think I must love you.

Terengganu Day Deux

Second day. Hogged someone else's camera , because I sadly don't own one. Black and white shots are so dramatic; it does so well in masking the dryness of the hot air, the stank of fresh garbage, and the beading of sweat down our backs.

Project IV, await us.

Perceive not.

Sometimes I forget what blogs are for. I think too much of them as personal diaries, than I should of them as a platform for my freedom of speech, since obviously, there is lack of room for that in social media.

Sad.

The world is so full with a lot of spite, and bitter people, so I may observe. Such harsh words are often spat out from one person to another, with little to no consideration, or respect at all.

Is there no sense of shame to be so blatant with rage, and passion?

I don't mean for us to be hypocrites - please, do not misunderstand.

It is simply not right to be so vulgar: the world isn't built around only a certain belief, be it political, cultural, or religious. We are vast with variety: no one man is the same as the other.

My words are unbiased and simple: do not impose.

Because the truth is there is no winning or losing, though this is easily forgotten. Life is not a gamble, it is a game of choices. You are not rolling dice, nor shuffling any cards; God blessed us each with a mind, and that mind is brilliant with thought, and rationality.

You only lose, if you choose to believe you have lost.

I see friends shouting in tyrant rage, pointing fingers to men across the room - crude language is exchanged, their breaths reeking stale of opinion - rash decisions too often being made by a vigor heart, acting too soon without thinking too long.

Change is then pleaded for; fought for. But how many times does one ask themselves of where does this change begin?

It is not far to seek for. Change begins with the reflection in the mirror.

The man who stares back at you during your morning routines - he is who must change. We are the seeds to the rebirth of a century! We are the points of a beginning, drawing lines of anew!

Though it is true that our strangers may be of worse: one cannot fight fire with fire, and indefinitely cannot wage a war for peace. It is reckless, and far too ironic, it is almost a comedic line.

If change is what is demanded for, then by all means, do so - change. And if everyone were to wisen up and do the same, there would be no need for fights, and riots, and angry words, and relentless havoc.

Immaturity is not classy.

To be the better man, first things first: be the better man.

Insomniac.

A pity it is, when your days have turned to nights.

Sunlight, hidden beneath blankets of grey clouds, rain showering the rooftops and filling our gutters, like swollen tear ducts. Weary beneath the cool sway of the wind, the color of the grass grows faint, immersing itself into the puddles of rain water, turning shades from emerald to a mournful laurel green.

It is only 3pm, and the sky is as dim as midnight. How long has the hand taken to pass from one minute to another. How dreary the wait for the arrival of the next hour. 

It is in the broadest of daytime that my limbs are paralyzed.

I cannot move further than to stretch the length of my arm. Simply, to reach out to the telephone, or to tickle my fingers through the keyboard of my computer, are the best of my efforts. 

If it's not the trait of the sloth, then it is the trait of a mad man - a sad man.

How far deep can depression hold you back? 

Can you walk out your door and still put a smile on your face? Or does the mere call of your name spite you?

I am shriveled and bitter.

Only dost my pillow know the truth behind my secrets, for I have dreamed many dreams that stained their faces with the dying morsels of my soul.

Hello, Stranger!

The worst part about making new blogs are these introduction/opening sequence things. Since I'm all out of fancy words, and my poetic mind has lost half of its youth; I think I'll keep this simple, and generic.

10 things you don't really care to know about me, but I shall mention anyways because I am bored.

1. I am a cliche, hopeless romantic: roses are my favorite flower

2. I have a fear of small corners and tiles, holes, and clusters

3. My favorite Marvel character is Gambit

4. I am not a liar, just a skilled pretender *wink*

5. I am socially awkward and highly insecure

6. No, I am not a lesbian

7. I am, and will forever be, a loyal fan-girl of Blue

8. I am a super-spy. Don't give me reason to go snooping, because trust me, I will find things!

9. Blogging is not my passion per se, but I can't imagine having a life without one

10. I believe in Harvey Dent

Restart.

Hello, quatrieme chapitre.