from the ashes...

"It made her wonder if you could know a person only at a single moment in time, because a year from now or a day from now, he might be different. It made her wonder if everyone reinvented himself or herself, if that was as natural as other animals shedding their skin." Jodi Picoult, 10th Circle

Two years since I’ve been here last. I feel like I grew to be a different person in the vast silence of more than 700 days. But I’m back. I feel as if I need to be.

I feel like I hardly know myself these days. Like there is this widening chasm from the person I once was and to whom I am becoming, I haven’t decided yet if it’s something I like. In one hand, I no longer have the urge to dig out a rusty blade and carve poetry in the inside of my wrists; on the other, I also stopped carving my soul in paper and shaping this confusing mass into something I can make sense of. In some way, I miss the sleepless moments I struggle with the voice inside my head for some sort of meaning – that tinny voice that answered back in Rilke’s question you need to answer in the deepest and darkest of your day… Now, I have successfully drowned out myself.

I look around here and wish I could start again. I have forgotten what it feels like to begin, to see the blank page as free and untarnished rather than a bandage to cover for all the empty days and pages.

But it might be braver to continue.

… and less of a hassle.

vrzoomm....

I thought I would update with, well, inanity.

Hard to believe but I’m halfway through my first year of school again. Not hard to believe that I passed my subjects and all, I mean, duh! But shucks, time passes by so fast that I didn’t even notice it in the haste to come up with where I’m getting the next installment to pay my tuition fees. Sheesh, it’s hard to be a student… not only do I not get enough sleep but the darned thing is expensive as well!

Anyway, I’m stressing about learning to dance the first two minutes of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean for the company Christmas thing. Can’t I just sing it instead? The darned song wouldn’t leave my head (complete with signature Michael Jackson shouts and grunts).

I’m supposed to be making a friend a blog. But then what the heck would I know about that? Hahaha

It occurs to me I might want to add a bit of color pictures or video here… Nah, too much work. I’d try to check on that later.

Remind me to rave about The Life Of Pi. I was seriously stumped by that book.

stasis

I sat down in front of the computer thinking I have a lot to say, opened a word document and everything flies out. I wish I had an exciting adventure full life to regale you or even clever stories and witty thoughts I just came up with while staring at the blinking cursor in the glaringly bright blank sheet in front of me. I remember days and nights spent agonizing over worn out notebooks I proudly called journals and wishing I can shut my thoughtas of and finally go to sleep and break the curse of pathetic insomnia. Of course I was also in a different mind set those days… angst, my constantly irritating companion. I’m more happy go lucky now. Sedate. Placid. Uncaring. Indifferent. Aloof. Maybe I finally fried my brain. Oh, well.

For some reason I wanted to update my blog. I actually have a handful of blogs I have forgotten passwords to time and again and abandoned thru time to focus on achieving the once sought after state of catatonia. These days, even if I’m awake I still feel like I’m sleepwalking. Sleepwalking through my nights while I pass out during the day and wake up for a brief moment just to submerge myself back to the unreality of the new novel I’m reading unconsciously taking note of how soon I’d finish it agitated in looking for one more to fill the interminable inactivity before I have to actually get up and go to work. My days are filled with nothing, I’m not proud to say… though not really minding it either except for some brief moments of realization that there’s a world out there beyond the four (five? six?) corners of my room, then I snap out of it and sleep it off. What happened to the fierce exclamations of ‘carpe diem’ and living life to the fullest, you ask me. I don’t know. Somehow it’s a bit frightening to even think that I don’t really care that much anymore. Feels even worse when it rings true.

Anyway, depressingly mundane things aside… well, I don’t really think there’s anything else aside from the depressingly mundane. Hahaha. It’s too funny how utterly hopeless this is. I just realized what a sad existence I’m living out because I still can’t come up with a reasonable explanation of how this stagnant existence is actually not as dreadful as it sounds. But then it really is not as bad as it seems to be. I’m well, relatively content to just watch the world go round, living vicariously through paperback novels and online fiction, exploring worlds and minds of people through the worlds they imagined.

But (here comes the glaringly obvious point I’m trying to gloss over) I leaving my own life to waste it seems… I feel guilty. Well, not guilty that I decline invitations to impromptu drinking sessions after work or even innocent breakfasts in usually expensive restos after shift. Not guilty that I spend more time being active in the office, around people I can tolerate going home tired and sleepy rather than going home on the dot and just engorging myself on mindless and pointless tv shows until I feel braindead or exhausted enough to sleep.

See, I think I’m still waiting for ‘life’ to begin even though I know that the world doesn’t work that way and the basic principle of physics is that anything would not move unless you apply force behind it. Yeah, the cognitive knowledge is there, I know and accept it as true but still stupidly wait for some kick that would propel my life to motion. The stupid thing is, a small part of me isn’t really sure if I want it to start. Today is real. It’s also simple, usually manageable, routine, comfy and safe. Most importantly, it’s safe. Safe from what? I really have no idea. So I go on reading about great adventures or even completely ordinary settings filled with deep insights borne of pain and chaos and conflict and I sit in my bed in my locked room completely removed from anything that could threaten the stillness of my existence. Live vicariously, said every one who has ever been great. I sit in the sidelines in awe, clapping and cheering my head of to afraid to follow… or too lazy and filled with rational yet empty excuses?

Fear or Laziness, asks director Richard Linklater in his rotoscoped animated movie Waking Life, which is the most universal human chracteristic?

(oh yeah, watch the movie… so cool)

listening to Go with the Flow by Queens of the Stone Age, which a xian asked me to listen to with his new zune. i should get one and just drown myself again in music shutting off the world beyond my earplugs... apathy and disinterest plus solitary absorption to music only i can hear... yeah, why not... dismissing the world one step further...

remember, remember the 5th of September?

I had it all figured out. The week of my birthday, I am on leave from work free to do whatever for the week and sleep the entire Friday away, not mentioning or even thinking of my birthday at all.

Thursday morning, I woke up as Imago’s The Box (my message alert tone) vibrated on my pillow telling me to call work. A few minutes later, I’m set to come in later that night and come in on Friday. There goes all my plans to mope around and get all broody and lazy which is just how I think a turn of another year should be celabrated, like dying and being born again, full of angst and waiting and mostly nothing but sleep. I used to be more active, I’d actually make the effort to go out of the house and numb my brain with mindless pop movies cinema hopping and high on caramelized popcorn.

But not this year (nor for any other past years that I remember).

A year older, I don’t feel it. Actually what I feel is a sore throat and sore muscles, lack of sleep and the tendency to remain awake in a super bright room filled with chattering people even if I hide myself under the cube we use as a quasi-apartment/motel (it’s all filled with small square pillows and blankies, separated from the world mostly). I also feel the need to prepare all I need for my training tonight that I told myself I wouldn’t think off not until 10pm later this evening when I come in for my 12am training. No, I’m not saying I work that hard, I would probably come in a little closer to twelve tonight since I already somehow have an idea of what I am going to do. Anyway, that’s not important, I’m just blabbing.

So, it’s the 5^th of September, almost exactly 23 years since I was born, what have I done with my life?

See? I told you brooding and angst is called for, not to mention an entire day of sleeping, or mind numbing TV, or a movie marathon of classic proportions, or sleep, yeah, sleep… and cake! Who could forget cake?