Today I found a new peace, a new heaven.

Andy, Jiayin and myself (sans Lingu, darn it) spent over three hours at Carl's Jr in PS and talked the night away over 5 cups of iced tea and 2 toilet breaks. There was such beauty between us, very diverse people who, save for the fact that we were grouped together by Lofty and Poon, would otherwise not be hanging out. It was peaceful and healthy, no cannibalistic emotions or silencing barriers. Just the memory of a close knit theatrical family and the present safe distance, neither too close nor too far. Just. Perfect.

And we'll keep meeting up this way, friends foreign to the usual routine, too far to threaten, too close for fear. And we'd share, and challenge and laugh and love. Like a Church.

It takes love to move one to love. And love is decisive, it is conviction. And after tonight, I think I can love my Church again. Albeit in this way:

I am the harm which you inflict
I am your brilliance and frustration
I'm the nuclear bombs if they're to hit
I'm your immaturity and your indignance

I am your misfits and your praised
I am your doubt and your conviction
I am your charity and your rape
I am your grasping and expectation

I see you averting your glances
I see you cheering on the war
I see you ignoring your children
And I love you still
And I love you still

I am your joy and your regret
I am your fury and your elation
I am your yearning and your sweat
I am your faithless and your religion

I see you altering history
I see you abusing the land
I see you and your selective amnesia
And I love you still
And I love you still

I am your tragedy and your fortune
I am your crisis and delight
I am your profits and your prophets
I am your art, I am your vice

I am your death and your decisions
I am your passion and your plights
I am your sickness and convalescence
I am your weapons and your light

I see you holding your grudges
I see you gunning them down
I see you silencing your sisters
And I love you still
And I love you still

I see you lie to your country
I see you forcing them out
I see you blaming each other
And I love you still
And I love you still
[Still ~ Alanis]

This is my church in all it's entirety. The church I am called to love, and will struggle with, to love and to be loved.

School, Angeline, Kelvin Chia Partnership, and a few bee-lines in and out of colourful clothing stores, dripping with cold contempt for the less-then-fabulous. I was flying high, walking on air, being THE smile on the face of the earth. My future is too bright, too possible, too blessed and too beautiful for me to grasp the weight of the now. And sure enough, 6 hours later, I am here depressed.

No, but that doesn't negate the amazingness of what is to come and what is now. Being surrounded by beautiful beatuiful people, with the promise of being surrounded by more.

Tristan Siu, whatever it is, you're my friend.

You will always be a part of me,
I'm part of you indefinately.

"What does this song remind you of?" Sarah asks one lazy day in our living room in Walter Gage. "Tristan Siu, when we were 12. I had a huge crush on him and he had one on me."

silence.

"TRISTAN???"
yes let the world curl up into that little ball that it really is.

This is family. Sitting around complete strangers who all wear the same wrinkles, as if bearing their mother's stories in the folds of their skin. The same story flickers across each face as each recalls a story, his story, her story, their story.

I walked into my Lau Dua Kong's (my grandmother's oldest brother) house and gawked at the number of relatives that have successfully evaded my knowledge. I mean, since when did my Grandmother's 9 siblings have children and grandchildren of their own?

I gingerly stepped in, and word got round that I was doing a school project on my family history, and before I knew it everyone was sitting around the tea-stained table shouting out their stories for my western Macbook to pick up. All in teochew. I would've fallen asleep during the three hour session had it not been so emotionally charged with laughter.

Laughter that fell in tears.

And at some point, when they laughed the hardest, my great-grandfather's ghost rose from behind my left shoulder. He thanked me for rousing the memory of him in his children again, that he might once again live in their togetherness.

----------------------------

For the Chinese, eating is both material and cultural. We feed our hungry ghosts before we may feed ourselves. Anestors are ravenous, and can die of neglect. Our fathers' children are also ourselves. The self is paltry, phatasmagoric; it leaks and slips away. It is the family, parents, siblings, cousins, that signify the meaning of the self, and beyond the family, the extended community.

This is the meaning of blood - to give, because you cannot eat unless the family is also eating... Oh Asia, that nets its chidlren in ties of blood so binding that they cut the spirit.

Exerpts from 'Among the White Moon Faces' by Shirley Lim

Music will always be my first love, for what it does to my soul and my spirit. I will never be good enough to stake a claim in her kingdom, but I will always want to have her in my life.

On another note, I miss Isabelle, she's my dear cousin with a great depth in her heart. She's too funny, too cute and too far away.

I am very grateful to the people around me. I say that my life is perfect and it is only because of you.

I have come to realise that I am a difficult person.
I do not envy the people who are entangled with me.

[[Edit : 1.56 am]]

I call you palindrome, but I really should call you paradox...
~ Mel, the muse.

Such is my life. And the question isn't 'who is able to love me?' but rather, 'can they love me successfully, throughout the length and breadth of my extremities?'

you love everyone, but love no one at the same time.

There's nothing quite as delightful as removing make-up. Slopping it on is not nearly half as desirable as slathering it off with essential oil and soap, revealing the protesting naked skin. The mask falls off yellow-black, ugly testament to the filth we carry ourselves through. And then eye-lids, once smokey gold, look calm again. Lips, before a suffering shade of burgundy, now soft pink and slightly chapped.

There's nothing quite as delightful as being natural. Be translucent in the light and dance like smoke, there's really nothing they can do to your world if you choose to be stable and secure in your own unique substance.

It's 1.24 in the morning and my twilight life is at it's peak. Only this time I am threatened to be wet with tears that refuse to come and fulfill my inner emotion. "He who laughs" has been left tear-stained, lost in a dettol-soaked environment.

And I sit here fretting over the inconsequential. I need to get over myself.

But for now I will bleed for him, for the apparent cruelty of God. But I am not here in the picture, this isn't about me and it is not my story. I can only trust that God is impeccably beautiful, strong and good.

And I will rest in this.

But yes,
OH GOD, HEAR OUR CRY!

In the car

Conviction or Convenience: Which do you live by?

At the end of my life, and though every moment of it, I want to be able to say that I lived through conviction, and not because something was easy. Easy living is easy dying.

I have found 2 redundant things in church, Politeness (as opposed to love) and defensiveness (as opposed to balance and openness). The first: why bother? The second: that's not the point.

And finally, I need I need I need to start being in the fellowship of God again. Else my ranting will be nothing but a resounding gong.

I have caved in.

So my 5 day diet of just fruits and vegetables isn't exactly a 5 day diet of just fruits and vegetables. I ended off tonight with vegetables in oyster sauce (yes, oyster sauce matters) and Aglio (no meat but it's still processed wheat).

Many of my friends and family are pleading with me to not be so harsh on myself. Bleh.

I do wish I was stronger.
Now I just want someone to scrape the insides of my stomache to get rid of the stowaways.