|
|
Nov. 5th, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
|
|---|
|
|
Aug. 24th, 2009 @ 10:11 am
|
|---|
|
Can puke blood already....why this old man wants to sue and sue and sue! Give it up and go home....then I don't need to handle so many pieces of paper from all over the years. I've been haunted by this since Day One, so if he changes his mind at the next meeting I think I shall bludgeon somebody to death.
Hanahana that's what interns are for, right? To work with meddlesome people. Anyway right now I feel like procrastinating and umm, being a general prick. Puke blood!
And and in two weeks time - oh wait, EXACTLY two weeks' time - I shall be back in Philly. Oh dear. Maybe I start studying for LSAT la huh. There's this job which I need to start applying for. I suppose I ought to start sucking up to people here for it. I suppose I need to commence more consciuos sucking-up to people in general, faculty in particular. But it doesn't really make sense, see, becasue in order to suck up I have to be interested in English as the academic subject, but how to effuse enthusiasm when inside I'm convinced of its inefficacy (with...the world? With changing anything?)? So I don't understand recommendations at all, unless it's to state that I am basic pleasure to be around, full of wit and sunshiney happiness. But my dog could tell you that.
(Not that I have one, of course.)
Who knows where we're going from here? Regardless, I'm thankful for this summer. Regardless of having to put up with diva attitudes and regardless of myself putting in shit work, because I'm only pretending to be a law student. Regardless of horribly borink people, who are in reality few and far between (but more so found within our generation). Regardless of having to Wake Up Early. On the last I should like to Keep Up This Habit, because it's an amazing one to have, and really I feel like the day hasn't been eviscerated in the squishiness of my nice warm bed. So I like that very much. The only problem is I haven't been thinking much, but gray matter must be preserved for campus anyway.
Okay okay back to work, now. Do I hate this Management Corporation Strata etc-shit...hope everybardy is having a blast, however! Further from here, I shall proceed to fornication with photocopy machine. |
|
but all I have wanted to say is that I just want them to be happy, in this life and the next.
not much has been happening in my life, in the way you would want to hear about...I have been engrossed in the things of this world, but careful to spend the last few minutes of each day with Him. And yet I think I have not been faithful enough, if faith means letting Him take over your words your thoughts your actions. Necessarily, I tell myself, one must do Other Things; this is as much a cop-out as a necessity. I have no intention of being a professional preacher of the gospel, right? I wish He'd call me to where I should be.
In the news regarding these material things, these day-to-day, I must confess that I am happy where I am; no, deliriously happy where I am, although not everything is perfect. I am encountering so much foreign stuff each day, that I don't really care about going back to school. I am encountering all these wonderful people, who will make me very sad to leave Singapore. |
|
|
Jul. 9th, 2009 @ 08:02 am
|
|---|
|
I watched 'Transformers' some nights ago. For all those who have, Roger Ebert says it best:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090623/REVIEWS/906239997
Quote: 'The first American review, Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical, reported that Bay's "ambition runs a mile long and an inch deep," but, in a spirited defense, says "this must be the most movie I have ever experienced." He is bullish on the box office: it "feels destined to be the biggest movie of all time." It’s certainly the biggest something of all time.' |
|
|
Jul. 6th, 2009 @ 11:05 pm
|
|---|
|
you want so desperately to cut off a part of yourself but you can't, you can't
i've gone from the penn bubble into a different one entirely, one where liquid trappings drip down, and it burns
and i try to use the stuff of my old walls, but no one thing will fit the other
and nobody said it was going to be easy. it's about what i imagined it would be:
no heads, no tails, no beginning, no end. i am not the sort to feel self-entitlement about birthdays, but this sucks. |
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
Home is where the heart is, even though I kinda miss being in Philly! I love my new room, even though it feels like I'm living in an ice cube when the walls and the ceiling (and the floor too, to some extent) are made of reflective material. Is perfect for maggoting, although I doubt I'll be spending much time inside. There is much stuff to be moved, much algae to be cleaned, etc etc.
Also, all of a sudden I have many neighbours (I am home, and therefore use home spelling). And am living opposite a petrol station, so if someone uses their handphone everything will blow up, and I will too (or is that a myth?).
And my mother thinks that Adam and Eve were incestuous. Nice.
This afternoon I tried reading a bit of Paul Bowles' short stories, before I fell asleep. It was mostly weird. I have realized, I need a nice christian library...or at least, new books.
I don't know man, this lifestyle is very - how shall I put it? Backtonormal; I guess the best way to say it is that all things are back to the way they were, the midnight violin and the crystals and the awful-awful Saturday afternoon porridge. Different location, same life. I think what must have scared some people is the idea of stagnantation, because the "Singapore life" is, I've found, very clearly defined. I don't know, I think it's the humidity or the startling familiarity which makes me feel, I need to go out.
Jul. 5th, 2009 @ 01:44 am
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
I just heard this song today...is pretty amazing...apologies if you've heard it before. I think it was popular in, what, 2005?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuK2A1ZqoWs
Jun. 30th, 2009 @ 01:11 pm
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
Don't look don't ask shh shh shhh
I think both of us agree that unhappiness is not to be bawled out in tears, and whined from top to bottom and beginning to end.
Anyway, that was just a random thought. It's not so much pride as just a (possibly warped) sense of consideration, when I don't want to be needy and cling on to other people. Maybe that's simply a product of whatever's happened in my life, although I don't remember very many instances of being betrayed. I think there came a point (and that point came very early) when I just decided people were not going to be there forever, or that trust would not always be repaid in kind. And it's true; that's the way of the world.
So I am still very cynical sometimes, especially with regards to peoples' intentions. I mean, how could you not be, growing up as I did? Seeing people who sought friendship for something other than companionship, seeing how that matter might creep up with disconcerting frequency? I don't think, though, that I have ever wanted to run away from who I am....on that count, I think I am quite satisfied. Oh, maybe I should wish I were less of a misanthrope, but then again I don't think I am much of one; all is a show, a show, a show.
Describe yourself in a sentence: confused, with basically good intentions. (Which is not much unlike the rest of the human race).
***
Anyhow, it's Tuesday now, and next Thursday I shall be going. I feel so...unprepared, spiritually, to leave. I've been thinking about this the last two days, and the real issue is that I'm not listening hard enough. And maybe it doesn't have to happen now, instantaneously.
Maybe it won't happen, ever.
But how can I think that way? I mean, I guess I can hope and read and pray, but at the end of the day, it's not up to me to say what will happen, and what won't. Right now I could say, "maybe they will not let me go, etc. etc.", but I have realized a great part of being in his light is the letting go of such 'maybe's'. Does that make me less speculative, less analytical? Or rather, hampers my capacity for any of the two, since the basic incidence certainly dwindles?
But you see, I don't even feel I need to hold up that question anymore.
***
It's almost like, right now I am trying to look for answers to unformed questions. Not even inchoate, just questions that were previously nonexistent in my head. And maybe that's why I get discouraged sometimes, when they tell me a dimension of being that I feel myself incapable of reaching. I mean, I guess it was well enough for Tripp to say that day that that is our identity now, it is all about the Christian identity"; it is well enough for people to say that we need a perspective of His reign. And inside my heart, or my head, there suddenly goes about a flustered voice: "what? What? What does that mean? How can you wrap yourself in saran and give yourself away, when you are still here?" And I am still here.
Maybe that's why I'm still caught, sometimes, between the practical and the passive. I only know one thing which I can do, and yet it still seems inadequate; perhaps I am not enough focussed on it. But how long of my life should it take?
How much of my life should this be?
Do you see what I mean, then, when I say I am tussling? I am not secure enough in the passive, that I do not worry about the practical. Right now my heart is just all over the place, and it's strange, because there's no momentous event in my life to be punctuating holes in my faith.
But another real question: not where am I, but where is God? On Sunday, after everything was over, I wrote: "Where am I?" But how can I decide? How can I just, out of myself, summon the conviction to say: Hello! Here I am on this side of the fence! Where is my head and heart, in this interplay between myself and Jesus?
Because even the smallest of things requires me to do it. It's still me who has to put the relationship into focus. It's still myself who must want to talk, and even then maybe not have Him talk in return, not on the instant anyway. But yes, I will do these things....
( oh, and some stuff from yesterday..excuse the ramblings )
Jun. 23rd, 2009 @ 05:23 pm
|
| » BABA GHANOUSH MY BACKSEAT,(baby?) |
|---|
( Psalm 23 )
Yeah yeah, so I'm not going to finish. I think maybe I won't sleep today...if I can still pull that sort of feat.
But good thing in life -> hello haier! I has air-con now!
I am attached to good things on one hand, and on another not. More unattached than attached, I would say, but then again I have yet to be put to the test.
But still, I am grateful for many things...and how was I supposed to be appreciative, last time? Now I know where to put it.
And now, we go onward...into the land of little rest, but a land which I have very well deserved, for all my putting off of things. Regardless, I will finish. It's only a first draft, right? I just need to go over the horrible phrasing of all those prejudiced sources.
One thing that is very scary from this exercise - I am coming to realize the horrors of selective opinion. Really, sometimes I come across things that would not be to the good of this council and her intentions, and I pretend as if it were not truth. Maybe they are overblown, maybe not - but I pretend that they do not exist, that we are getting a happy bappy state of things, of interreligious harmony. I am clapping on the rose-tinted glasses for other people to see. And yet, as much as I would like commitment to "truth", there is truth that can only harm when propagated, and so all I give is a diluted version of pain.
Should it hurt, that I am writing with intention and therefore not being completely honest? They have wanted a view and I am giving them that. It's not a bad view at all; really it's something at least fruitful, something from which lessons might be learnt. I'm just slightly disgusted...maybe not disgusted, but unsettled - by these principles that I have out of nowhere imposed upon myself, because they jar with previously ingrained principles of art.
Jun. 17th, 2009 @ 08:08 pm
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
Oh, and on a side note, the new penn intouch is really quite disgusting; I can see my toot face.
So that's what happens in life eh - you take a lousy picture and it'll always come back to haunt.
Jun. 15th, 2009 @ 05:56 pm
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
( cut )
Jun. 15th, 2009 @ 11:55 am
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
Final post for the day: I've probably put it up here before, but just feel like doing it again
The National, "Start a War"
We expected something, something better than before
We expected something more.
Do you really think you can just put it in a safe behind a painting, lock it up and leave?
Do you really think you can just put it in a safe behind a painting, lock it up and leave?
Walk away now
And you're gonna start a war
Whatever went away I'll get it over now. I'll get money, I'll get funny again
Whatever went away I'll get it over now. I'll get money, I'll get funny again
Walk away now
And you're gonna start a war
We expected something, something better than before
We expected something more.
You were always weird but I never had to hold you by the edges like I do now
You were always weird but I never had to hold you by the edges like I do now
Walk away now
And you're gonna start a war.
(Repeat chorus)
Ok so these are not particularly intelligent lines...but the song itself is bleak and funny, I likey.
And these have been mildly productive days, good enough for me - even though I am going to be friiiied tomorrow. Like seriously. Why do I do what I do?
Jun. 11th, 2009 @ 06:52 pm
|
| » sian... |
|---|
( Rennie Whang, 你到底想做什么？ )
Jun. 11th, 2009 @ 05:54 pm
|
| » latest resolution (boo hoo hooo): |
|---|
Play less. Work more.
Jun. 11th, 2009 @ 01:05 pm
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
( little random reading things )
Life has been reasonably engaging - Chestnut Hill/Morris Arboretum on Saturday, and Washington DC on Sunday, and and my crazynonsense run on Tuesday (I THINK it was Tuesday, am losing track of the days here). I don't know how I managed to focus for so long on the drive back to Philly, but I don't think I was ever bored. I tried talking to God on the way back, but got distracted by highway exit numbers and the rumbles of the car on the road. I realized that I quite like being behind the wheel, and have no problems doing MORE ROADTRIPS IN THE FUTURE, hehehehehe.
Therefore, I conclude that I would be perfectly happy living in a place where one must drive in order to get to anywhere at all (to get in touch with other civilization, maybe). I might be still happier living in a place free from automobiles, where the bicycle (and other quaint forms of assorted transportation) would be the norm. Unfortunately, very little occupations allow such a secluded life...apart from farming, I suppose. Maybe I shall be a milkmaid after I graduate.
Modern life is, after all, too complicated. Do you think it possible that Man stopped developing his head a hundred years ago?
Anyway, what I really really want now is a HOLIDAY, in every proper sense of the word. It's ridiculous how there's never enough hours in a day - unless I were to not sleep, but maybe even then - to do everything I want to, even though school has been out for a while. I guess I am a horrible prioritizer, and a ghastly procrastinator, but well what's new. I just need to not screw up my grades next semester. Anyhow, I think I would make a first-rate bum....somebody ought to pay me. Surely, some god-forsaken firm on earth is BLIND to the measure of marginal productivity!
And it's raining. Very nice. What was it I wanted to say? I think I wanted to leave, pack up for a few days, and go into remote wilderness, but everybody thinks that way. I think I need to live independent of my external surroundings. I think Singapore will certainly be a good test of that.
When the idea of parents' opposition etc etc etc comes up, I find myself quite tired already. I don't really care anymore. That's how many things work with me - the emotion eventually exhausts itself, and afterwards settles into a steady indifference. But maybe it is just the fact that it's turning 4AM.
Jun. 11th, 2009 @ 02:53 am
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
Yesterday, I was greeted by someone who kissed me on the cheeks. Today, I'm idly wondering what would happen if I suddenly decided to do the same. There are several possible results (maybe as many as there are people), but the ones that I can think of are:
a) flattered
b) disgusted
c) confused
d) fear of contagious disease...
Jun. 5th, 2009 @ 03:10 pm
|
| » (No Subject) |
|---|
"A well written article in the New York Times reported in early October that: “Armed Islamic fundamentalist groups [in Indonesia] have received money, men and arms from the bin Laden group and its allies”. And this
particular article mentioned two organizations, in particular FPI and the Laskar Jihad (Jihad Force). In fact there are dozens of small splinter groups in Indonesia. The article citing American intelligence sources mentioned by name FPI plus the Laskar Jihad. I have personally been to the FPI headquarters in Jakarta and have spoken to
the leader of the FPI and some of his followers. My conclusion from those discussions, and from observing the way the headquarters was run, is that if the al-Qaeda organization is financing the FPI, they are wasting their money. It is a quite unsophisticated grassroots organization. Their preferred weapon is a big stick which they use to smash up bars and bottles of beer and so on, chasing and intimidating customers from massage parlours. There are no airline pilots among the members of the FPI."
-Harold Crouch, International Crisis Group, Jakarta
Anyway I need to figure out how to stay in school and this life, without actually being much interested. Really I can forsee months on end, of sleeping and playing and reading, and how I would like that very much, but I don't think I should be doing that at this point in my life. As much as I might like to say that it's getting my fundamentals straight, I know with much certainty that it is also laziness speaking, and no human bean gets very far with basic unmotivation and an unwillingness to get out of the snuggly confines of his life. Maybe, in some ways I am still looking for those confines - or at least, a practical expression of what I know to be a) true; b) worth doing; c) suitable to whatever capabilities I might have, in the faintest hypothetical universe of endowed beings. Right now I am catching with my hand these wisps of possibilities, but they are only little dreams, little pieces of eventualities that need a while to properly come into place.
Yet, for some of them, there is the question of time. Am I even going to give myself the time to explore anything other than the ordinary way of things? Not ordinary in the sense of mundane and workaday, but - just - the norm. The norm of feeling that one has to constantly be up to something, something you can grill nicely and flip onto a resume, for its being coded in corporate speak. It's, I guess, an eternal (oh fine, where this present world is concerned anyway) struggle of trying to reconcile the important with the lesser necessity, which is in itself still a necessity - figuring out how it could be possible to feed the body with food made for the mind, etc. etc. Oh, I suppose we could all go on eternal (you remember what I mean by this) fasts and pass off threadbare in the charity of our salvation armies. And of course that would be one of the truest tests of faith there is, but how far am I prepared to go? How am I even supposed to know where my calling is?
Sometimes I get the feeling that people are always telling me, but I never listen even though I have constantly claimed open ears and an opened heart. What does that mean? Not enough, as much as I claim to ears strained and slicked and salted with tears. I am always talking and talking, writing really but still talking, and it would be a lifetime of words with nothing out of it besides a little circle of thoughts. As obsessively reflective as I am, maybe I haven't been doing the right introspection of late. It's been a little of "dooo something for God don't be a bum in His name", and it's puzzling to see where all this will lead me. Ky, I think you were very right.
I think we are chasing after all these glories because we want so badly to represent Him, and it becomes a win-win situation when we feel good, and so does He (we think). But it is so much harder to come to a place where we don't feel good about ourselves, and the only good there is is invisible, intangible, almost imaginary to begin with. I don't mean accepting Him into our lives when we see ourselves as inadequate; rather I mean accepting and constantly rendering ourselves 'inadequate' because we see Him. It means postponing the pleasures of this Earth, because we believe a far greater pleasure will come. But there are questions to this postponement: how are you to say anything to people when you are utterly outside of their language? For these are no longer the days of blind prophets, and the raggedy talker is more often than not shunted into the madhouse.
And people will say, "Yeah, well, it's good for you to believe in something which says 'whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.'"
How much weight will my words have then? For it is not just words, but actions which endear people to something that they would otherwise find repugnant, if as baldly stated as a copy of the Gospel. To some extent then, I must participate in the trappings of this world. All of us must. But we must know where our soul is, and what the heart of that soul desires. It is that which we must protect, turning to God continually for guidance, because we will always be tempted. It is not easy to walk a fine line between worldliness and a complete disregard for it, which is also slovenliness. Still, we must always remember that if the soul is to come into conflict with the body, one of them must always acquiesce....because every pain is only of this moment, but every regret risks an extension into eternity.
And so I believe God speaks to the heart, and the heart only. I am not saying that He does not care about our physical, physiological occurrences, because I do not know; but that he meets the needs of our hearts first and foremost, and answers the calls of the body according to them. And in that answer, we should have all we need, because he knows how much profit will make us greedy, or how little should lead us to stinge; and we know that the body is never truly satisfied unless the heart is, the latter only acquiring peace through faith. So help us to be wise, and help us to have faith, even though it may seem unreasonable in light of external demands. Help us be perceptive to Your plans, and listen when we say we shall; help us see the important things, and bring that clarity to other peoples' lives.
**
Anyway, I've not yet finished this, and am not about to run a book reviewing service as it is, but here is a small something -
In "The Bookends of the Christian Life", Jerry Bridges writes of "the expulsive power of a new affection":
"For many years, the two of us thought that the mind was the best weapon against the sins of the heart. We attempted to use our knowledge of 'what I should do" to fight our sinful desire of "what I want to do."" But a nineteenth century sermon helped change his view - in it, the minister says: "the best way to disengage an impure desire is to engage a pure one; the best way to expel the love of what is evil is to embrace the love of what is good instead. To be specific, we must replace the object of our sinful affection with an infinitely more worthy one - God himself. In this way we do not move from a full heart into a vacuum. Instead we move from a full heart to a heart bursting with fullness. And the expulsive power of our new affections weakens and even destroys the power of sin in our hearts." "Ultimately," Bridges says, "our godly desires must overcome our sinful desires if we're to obey God. So to win the battle against sin, we must strengthen and encourage our godly desires. How? By simultaneously growing in our awareness of: (1) our sin - our knowledge of the moral will of God and how far short we fall daily; and (2) God's love - the grace and blessings purchased by Christ in the gospel...As the spirit testifies to our sin and to the righteousness Christ graciously provides, our hearts are gripped by the immensity of the gap between what we deserve and the blessings purchased by Christ's obedient death. As we become increasingly desperate for the gospel, our sinful desires are expelled from our heart because they're replaced with a new desire for the God who demonstrated "his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). As a simple yet practical application of this understanding, we might preach the following one-sentence sermon to ourselves every day: "Because he loves me so much, I love him more than _________."
"As we see how incomparably desirable God is, he becomes our superior satisfaction, our all-surpassing treasure (Matthew 13:44). Our appetite for sin grows weak by comparison, and we expel it because there's not room enough in our hearts for both. Our affection - our love for God - is then expressed in personal obedience and deepened relationship with the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said, "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him...And we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:21, 23)."
Jun. 1st, 2009 @ 11:38 am
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
millefoglie's journal