hothouse flowers

This is a memory.

 

I’m dating a boy who might be a douchebag. He’s got a soft side to him that is kind to animals and grandmothers, of which he will tell me one 3am morning to the point of teariness while we’re keeping the cold out with flavourless white broth. At the next table are two ajummas who hate me– because I’m Asian but cross my chopsticks, because I’m eating with a boy whose Asian blood evades his white, white complexion. Let’s not stray, put the facts as they are. So! He might not be a douchebag, simply insistent and snickety in his interactions, too quick to assume his version is truer, stronger, better, rather enthusiastic about frat boy status. And these might not be dates, they seep away faster than slush on a mat, and at the end of the day, I’m too ruthless and unpredictable to be good for anyone on the dating floor and he becomes another casualty. Maybe the ajummas don’t hate me. They just worry.

 

The memory is not about this boy. 

 

It’s about while I’m waiting for him to don his coat in the dormitory, and you are there, obnoxious thing, looking into my eyes to see if you can push your boyish charm out of its boundaries. You succeed, because you’re adorable and we’re both hungry for ocular proof of connection. It’s funny how the eyes are described as the mirror of the soul. Most of the time they underachieve, stopping short at vanity and desperation. The other boy comes downstairs, regards us briefly and shoves his discontent into coat pockets along with a ledger of women as pain and trouble. Some months later a mishap occurs in the first ten minutes of Memento while we’re temporarily unoccupied by other forces. I’m too soused to remember it, apart from your breathy excitable accent and consideration with the toilet paper. I get angry, rightfully so, but only for awhile, and we become good friends matching each other’s best points to other people. The incident alters for good my outlook on intimacy. Another few months later, I shoot myself in the foot: setting up blunt and limiting dividers around a boy who might have been willing to read into me and be happy. I can’t tell, my dear, when you’re joking, because I’ve been nothing but blunt around you and it’s been my undoing. So I don’t know if it means anything that you still tell me your exhilarations and worries, only when I ask, only when I ask first.   

 

For all the advice I dispense, freely, sternly, chop chop– I don’t take my own. I wonder if I’m going to keep turning down people who could give me quiet nights by the river (like K might have) and promises that don’t need to be said. Looking at myself now, I run headlong into the worst kind of trouble. Boys who pair my name with experiments or rest stops, who don’t leave a seat, who flit out of range, unnamed and untameable.

Seriously,

I can do without your stalking.

 

Thanks.

 

You, I don’t want to talk to you until I can’t help it, and anyway life has started again, so you’re not going to hear from me for a bit. Take care of your finicky lovely self and try sleeping, it actually does a body good. Over breakfast I thought of the way you slouched into my copy of the Sandman, how you plopped out of bed and into the car so you could drive me to Holland V. “What time are you coming home?” you asked, and I was oddly touched again at the unloving, unspecified way you have of caring. I don’t miss you terribly, just acutely, but I miss what hasn’t happened yet, not what happened before, because we were always getting better, getting from frosty to room temperature. Warm even, like the times you spontaneously grab me before remembering your deadlines. The real problem was that time unlike writing runs without punctuation. I don’t want anything more, just the scraps of you lying about for me to sample, nothing signed in blood, just a few months that fade like all months do. 

 

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, have you read it yet, you tardy thing?

 

Last night I was so very tired, tired to the roots of a past life. My first instinct was to call P-Andrew so he could tsk at me, tow me home like he’s so good at, then I remembered I’m not supposed to be lazy or a lemming. P-Andrew is very good at preserving me, I think I don’t thank him enough for it.

 

Eyes like nails, I thought, when I looked at it.

if the world’s at large why should i remain

The measure of my affection for you lies in the willingness to brave technological catastrophe and hours of confuscating word tangles. For as long as you do not know how I feel, a more telling indicator might be that I don’t get mad when you’re not exactly nice (here I go making excuses, because you’re cold, ill, sleep deprived, in need of a private moment– valid states for grumpiness, and anyway you were never the warmest in words– am I spoilt because everyone else is unabashedly sweet to me?).

 

Some people say they’d never pick my path of risk but Kex knows I’m just coming to life again. I look at these plans not as prayers, because if anything a higher power is just standing aside and gesturing, “By all means, if you please! I’ll just potter behind.” It is my time to strive and if I don’t do it for you I do it to live with myself. If you’re unworthy, just another bruise or speeding ticket, at least I’m moving from where I whine to where I want to be, where undoubtedly I’ll find something precious, sunken and beautifully surprising– which actually, has only so little to do with you.

Hoard

Sometimes I am deeply distressed by how much clutter I’ve amassed.

 

The clutter in no way resembles an earthquake aftershock; dust bunnies have yet to fornicate between my 1678 paperbags and 2173 cables. Much of the clutter, quite like my passive aggression, is a boxlid or closet door away. Those enjoying the fresh air lean over balconies of tetris tower Ikea boxes and organizers. There is a loose demarcation of whatgoeswhere– south of the door is a marketplace of robot earrings and handcuff necklaces, west beneath the oval antique mirror are potions and powders, the bookcase is a settlement for anything with a spine and pages (up till this year it had a plaster replica of my upper and lower jaws circa 2001; I don’t remember who got it as a gift). My desk is overrun with battlements of needles and unpickers. For a packrat, I’ve laid down some district laws.

 

The problem? This room is increasingly schizoid. I can’t breathe in it, visitors give up trying to navigate the channels of any single identity and succumb to the siren of a waterbed  (soft and embracing and the enemy of productivity). When I do manage to draw a couple of breaths, I can’t work or draw or even make out (everything ends in sleep. Upon sleep. In Briar Rose proportions). The great confusion of this room may be written as

 

Multiple images: Why do I have 5 umbrellas, 30 visible boxes, 50 bottles, 6 pairs of scissors, a bursting wardrobe of which I wear 10%, and 3 wickless candles??

 

Unrelenting detail:  My own room bombards me with mantras and exhortations, such as WARNING CHOKING HAZARD, WE OWN S M U, SLEEPING IS GIVING IN NO MATTER WHAT THE TIME IS, ALONG THE LINES. As someone who abhors the constant visual sell sell sell of advertising (yet I am a marketing student…) I am aghast. Beyond text overload I am also assaulted by lime greens, yellows, flourescent numbers, glittering beads, montages of texture and undulation. Like Steven Miesel minus the beauty and leggy women.

 

NOSTALGIA 101: Not even the sepia kind of a golden age. Fanny packs and ElectroWizard Invention kits from when I was 9. Blotchy mildew slimes the ceiling of my bookshelf, above such gems as The Bluffer’s Guide to Computers (“You should therefore start any conversation with the computer illiterate with a lengthy discussion on binary”) and 1997 Superdiary. These literally oust my lurching, dog earred copies of Leadership and Teambuilding and Strategic Management of Technological Innovation– monuments of the terror I have lived through in college and am set to endure till 2010.

 

Brand New Colony: of creams and gels with faded labels and innards that deepen to astonishing amber and ochre, hardening in the chagrin of neglect. Like I said, no dust bunnies, but Mr Heineken and Miss Teacup-never-given-to-first-boyfriend have reached an understanding over the years and are literally inseparable.

 

My Heart Will Go On and On oh shut up already: Who are these 10 year olds I have never seen in my life (clearly that one with the cheeks must be me)?! Why do I have proud and obvious photos of not one but two ex boyfriends, with one photo dated 2004 and another a full set of neoprints?! Sometime in 2006 I threw away my mummified museum of every flower I ever received but the smug condom wrapper in my Coach purse suggests I do not have a talent for clearing. 

 

Blue is the colour of: stagnation, lobster blood and all the walls in my room. Natural light loses the battle, always. I’d repaint the walls but would have to move stubborn furniture x 9 mammoths plus all clutter plotting within. 

 

I need a vending machine, there must be a fetish in certain East Asian societies for junk belonging to 21 year olds. Gads we could even begin in my underwear drawer  cupboard. Behold the bra T looked down my uniform to while I was blushingly analyzing every brush of our hands, and clutter had not yet matured into Blue Whale.

whut

So I was enjoying the laughable anticks of a certain miss C (or L or X… it was never very clear) and an intruder got into my house. Wailing, yelling and furious pounding ensues. 

 

Now there are 4 police officers tromping on my carpets with their shoes on. Admittedly they took so long to get here that if people were desperate I’d have been killed 6 times. I don’t think this is a good time to get into the shower.

Please cuddle me if you see me my ears are drooping in stress

Murphy’s Law in full technological force ( I don’t even want to talk about it. It could be far worse but my. lost. data!!! SCREAM SCREAM) and on top of that I am broke. Can the government pay me my $600 already please!!

 

Let’s not be all hate hate whine whine while we’re in possession of our limbs and still living under a roof and perfectly able to have healing stress negating sex and pig out sessions no less. Breathe. Porkchops.

 

So I’ll just say GROWL GROWL WHIMPER HONK and crawl back into the funeral pyre of the land of Smoo. Baptism by fire. All the while I am reminding myself that this will build my resilience even if for now it’s just larding the inches onto my ass.

 

 

Full text FAIL. Twitch.

 

Many hours later I have finally succeeded (in finding something better)! PENGUIN CLAP of victory! PAPAPAPAPAPAPP!!

Blogging plant

Am I the only one who thinks this is dreadful?! Now I can never kill a plant because maybe it is alive and wants to blog! Do you know the implications of this?!

 

In other news…

“When will you understand that F*CKIN CUTE is not an appropriate name for a koala?!”

“It is…”

“I’m glad you don’t know this koala.”

“The koala is messin with my soul.”

 

I want you to know
When I look in your eyes
With every blow
Comes another lie

is the song I do my readings to.

SNAFU is an acronym meaning roughly…

Sometimes I get wordy and snarkily pretentious in my essays, which appalls me to no end. There I go again. The abuse of words that curl the tongue and upturn the nose when really I could linguistically bob a humble curtsey. You can be sure that’s what’s happening whenever I bomb this place with three trivial posts in one day, all fribble and no finesse. Yeah you can tell someone’s been writing a 3000 word essay, I get possessed by the semiotic spirit of a confounding and pernicious Victorian schoolmarm. Yah! I just need to Personify some Concepts now. Oh Lady Sleep why do you bashfully turn your cheek from my Exhaustion. 

 

Did you know another word for ‘trivial’ is ‘yeasty’? As is ‘hoity toity’ so says the free thesaurus. Man this bread is trivial. Ants in your pants or a hoity toity infection.

 

I have a huge distaste for words like ’snafu’ (sounds like a snack with Chinese dairy content) and phrases like ‘double edged sword’. I tried paraphrasing the latter but the first thing that came to mind was ‘two headed hydra’, not really what I was looking for. So I turned it to polycephaly, bicephaly, dicephaly and diprosopus but none of these were going to add value (‘add value’– another phrase I hate except in set meal menus) to my technology report:

… an ideal working model for freedom of speech, the ebb and flow of information left to the devices of demand and supply. But one must remember that Web 2.0 can be a congenital cephalic disorder/two headed hydra/while we’re on this mythical thread let’s talk three headed dogs and two faced deities…” 

Concluding things is hard unless you’ve got a stick-in-your-tummy-like-a-chicken-pot-pie type awesome phrase or perhaps a crate of beer, whereupon everything ends with an exclamation mark, a song, or a neat plop into bed.

 

NOTE: I really did go with two headed hydra in the end. It’s 3am! I’m tired! This is why I’m not a journalist!

Bells and whistles

Elise Y wrote:

“this morning kind of sucks because I didn’t wake up in time for breakfast and I had to wake up to this crazy alarm and I can’t walk around naked.

I just got a new phone Monday. I haven’t yet figured out how to change the alarm tone and this thing is seriously the worst thing I’ve ever heard there is like this whole “a capella” theme on my phone sounds and the alarm wow I can’t even describe it.

basically think of a thing that would make you want to kill yourself. it’s like “bambambmabmabma GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING” and I can’t really remember because I’m not fully conscious when I hear it but seriously this is all in that singsongey choirey voice that makes me want to kill myself.

it’s been three days of this phone and I might break it. this is even worse than the porn music my last phone played as an alarm song.”

Her entry makes me want to flounce about class screaming, YES! THAT IS EXACTLY THE BLASTED RINGTONE sneaking into your dreams with doom-doom-doom… GOOD MORNING before exploding into the radioactive shock of BADADADABADABADABA! GOOD MORNING ad infitinum plus random aggravating BAOs and BOMs conjuring toxic visions of clinically insane bald men in clown outfits. Way to start the day.

 

Here in Sporeville my alarm clock has the catastrophic vigour of a fire alarm, but I swear nothing is as rude and intrusive as this damn Korean ringtone. 

 

I know you love The Sartorialist as much as I do, but the feline-inclined might take doubly to THE CATORIALIST.

impishness at 1am

Oh woeful day. I

• suffered internal bleeding doing an online midterm exam.
• am feeling epic stress, working up the courage to talk to a beautiful girl (how much worse will it be in a couple of weeks when I have to repeat the process with a beautiful boy?)
• still have not decided on the topic for Friday’s technology paper
• have suspected mouse in throat. Hack cough hack. 
• have expensive, immoral urges. 

Clarification: I haven’t been actively swallowing rodents- that is a level of adventure I shall stay away from. Also I have no diabolical interests in aforementioned girl, I just need a model to pose for a mini portfolio.

 

Craigslist is my perpetual mood lifter. Sometimes I have to stop myself from snorting, hooting or exclaiming loudly. 

“You were probably visiting someone in the building that afternoon since you emerged from the visitors’ elevator and walked across the 2nd floor. You were absolutely, mind-bogglingly beautiful. You had shoulder-length hair and were wearing a deliciously summery brown dress with a floral pattern of sorts. You walked with such poise and had a bum that could stop traffic all on its own. The new traffic police: the BUM SQUAD.

If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to have your hand in marriage and devote my life to your well-being. If you were visiting a significant other in the building, no worries, we can arrange to have him whacked or something. 

I’m, frankly, not in your league, but here’s hoping you have a thing for slightly eccentric, metrosexual finance nerds and aren’t terribly fussy about the faces attached to them. Mine tends to frighten little children.”

SDU needs in on this.

 

I am suddenly reminded of ask-your-boyfriend-not-to-punch-me from Arts Fest. Which in turn assures me that the opposite gender is attracted to pasty creatures in all black, preferably frazzled, scuttling and gasping under three plastic chairs. Take a hint ladies. 

 

Time to stop reading craiglist. One of these days I’m really going to write a post selling my green-and-white dental mold, primary 4 prefect tie and brand new pricey lingerie (because the uniting feature across my dating history is a firm belief that undies are to be abolished not enjoyed– yeah even you Art Boy). And the only people on Singapore Craigslist are suspect to say the least. They might use my dental mold as an ashtray. Cook my tie with pasta! The horror. 

 

A piece of wisdom from an ex-classmate:

Female classmate: -resolutely- I don’t want to have sex, ever.

Male classmate: Really? How about when you get married?

Female classmate: Not even after marriage.

Male classmate: What about your husband?

Female classmate: -total confidence- I’ll find a husband who doesn’t want to have sex with me!