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| auf Wiedersehen, good night.
I'm QUITTING this whole Xanga thing.
Nope, nothing's the matter, nothing happened to trigger this off. Just, why not? I trust my pen and paper, my therapy. It's time to go back to the basics. | | |
| Waking up late, being late, as usual.
Seeing such a familiar lovely face, feeling the happiness gush up and threaten to spill over.
Scaring innocent commuters with talk of flu and the letters 'H', 'N' and the number '1', walking, walking, walking through long tunnels.
Excitedly trying to converse with baristas who were supposed to be friendly, and getting slightly miffed at their unfriendliness. Awkward exchanges with a boy you know, yet don't know. Steamed milk, milk chocolate. Chocolate powder, vanilla powder.
Eggs and fruit salads made with love love love, nothing but love. And fruits.
Song title after song title in sqooshed handwriting thanks to the cold air, and not caring, writing just writing. Yellow post-its. Files dropping all over the place, pencil cases. Song, after song, after song, after song.
Attempts to study, watching a silly little girl nod off, not having the heart to wake her. Still freezing. Graphs, red markers, pens and notebooks. iPods.
Wanting to eat at Pastamania, ending up at a food court. Who cares where you eat, it's who you eat with. Some things never change. Chili.
Back to the Arctic. Phone calls to one person, ending up talking to so many others and missing them so much. Back to the one in front of you. Neglect is not good. Ditching all attempts to study.
Drum school. Tunnel. Train. Talking. Wrong station, you ninny, don't get off.
Dawdling in the candy section for ages and ages, searching for something to substitute a craving. Please bring it back into production, I liked it. Yummy. Crazy decisions, pretty-tasting decisions, soft fluffy decisions. Milk tea. Some things never change.
Seeing another familiar face. Heart leaps with joy once again, what a wonderful coincidence. Cashiers, cakes, candy.
Interchanges, silly talk. Goodbyes that aren't sad, but filled with anticipation of the next meeting.
Texts that make you smile, concern thinly veiled, advice taken to heart, words of encouragement. Telepathic texts, I was going to send you one. Inspiration, home.
Today, I am happy. | | |
| Hello Lim Qixuan, I love you.
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| The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.
She is manufactured like a sports sedan.
She is retooled, refitted and redesigned
every decade.
Cecile had been seduction itself in college.
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed
in the dark red lipstick of desire.
She visited in ‘68 still wearing skirts
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,
while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,
lipstick pale as apricot milk,
hair loose as a horse’s mane. Oh dear,
I thought in my superiority of the moment,
whatever has happened to poor Cecile?
She was out of fashion, out of the game,
disqualified, disdained, dis-
membered from the club of desire.
Look at pictures in French fashion
magazines of the 18th century:
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way, while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood.
The breasts are stuffed up and out
offered like apples in a bowl.
The tiny foot is encased in a slipper
never meant for walking.
On top is a grandiose headache:
hair like a museum piece, daily
ornamented with ribbons, vases,
grottoes, mountains, frigates in full
sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy
of a hairdresser turned loose.
The hats were rococo wedding cakes
that would dim the Las Vegas strip.
Here is a woman forced into shape
rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:
a woman made of pain.
How superior we are now: see the modern woman
thin as a blade of scissors.
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.
A cat or dog approaches another,
they sniff noses. They sniff asses.
They bristle or lick. They fall
in love as often as we do,
as passionately. But they fall
in love or lust with furry flesh,
not hoop skirts or push up bras
rib removal or liposuction.
It is not for male or female dogs
that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.
If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves
like healthy babies burbling in our arms.
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed
to need what is sold us.
Why should we want to live inside ads?
Why should we want to scourge our softness
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?
Why should we punish each other with scorn
as if to have a large ass
were worse than being greedy or mean?
When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained?
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?
-Marge Piercy | | |
| Flick the light switches on, shut the door, turn the lock and the torture begins. Why do I even do this. No answers, no answers. If anybody knows, please do share, I beg of you. I finally understand what my junior went through.
I thought I could choose happiness, but recently my happiness seems to be controlled by three little digits and cold, hard metal. It's rationed out to me, trickle by trickle, drop by drop. You have no idea how it feels to have your mood hinge on such things.
I know it's wrong, but I can't seem to control my actions. You think I don't know it's self-destructive? I'm an F&N student after all, for goodness' sake. I used to be able to control this, to tell myself that, "No, you're being bloody stupid, stop it, just stop it" and I would stop, at least for some time.
Whatever, this topic's getting old. | | |
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