"perceiving life as a perpetual film."

For the past few nights, there has been a water-skater of sorts dangling on the inner walls
of my bathroom sink. it can’t be the same one, for each time i see it i flush it down with
copious amounts of clear water, followed by toothpastey water, followed by facial-washey water. Unless, like a sort of multiple-legged Indiana Jones, it surfs agilely on the vertical flow, finds a grip on the inner part of the drain-stop and there it clings, underneath the shelter of its shiny umbrella, safe from all the corrosive fluoride and garniér foam beads i can possibly throw its way. Or maybe it takes exactly 24 hours to climb up the pipe from wherever my torrent of water’s flung it, only to reach the slippery gray walls of the sink to meet my merciless gaze and the turning of the tap. Hmm. And then i go outside to take my nightly red cup of water from the marble bar countertop, for a brief moment imagining Norman Bates hyped-up-on-acid with his psychotic eyes and bloodstained sharp knife arising slowly from the murky living room beyond that marbletop to stab my hands as i reach for that plastic cup.

What can I say. It’s a kind of ritual, for these nights at least.

and then i think about the fact that there's three months (janfevmars) looming ahead, where the frost will probably gather upon the screen that i'm staring at now, the water in my cup frozen into ice, that i won't be able to use a cup at all, but a thermos, perhaps. yes, i'm going to pennstate, managed to get my package last week, felt like it was christmas come early. and so now i'm itchy-fingered, typing out my thoughts as they come. borrowed two anthologies of short stories (so good for toiletliterature) from the central library, one by muriel spark and one on jazz short stories(!). it seems to me so many have forgotten the actual pleasure of going to the library now, given the fact that most students go there for research purposes and not to borrow light reading..anyways. i digress. my flight's been booked, i fly on the 29th of december, at 1030pm, on korean airlines (yeah this may induce raised eyebrows but i don't care, apparently it's a limited seat period). so you heard it here first, don't say i never update you people. *winks at yanny* i shall spend new year's in new york city, am meeting karen and friends there. i expect the days to be transcendent, full of glittery-snowflaked bliss.

gail told me on sunday that i shall have to break tradition with my christmas present opening. i never thought of that before. but she's right. i always open presents one a day at a time, just so's the pleasure's prolonged. the same goes for birthdays. that way, no matter how dreary the day is, there's always a present waiting for me. like a light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel. and so i continue opening my presents into september from august, and into january from december. it's a fun ritual, but this time the cold crisp air i shall breathe will just have to tide over my days.

i just read this line.
"the greatest literature is the occasional kind, a mere after-thought... life, is the important thing." the seraph and the zambesi, muriel spark

amazing, that. i've always wished to be able to capture the essence of things within a single sentence, like the way i've told many how the body shop scent oceanus can bring back poo-caked paris to me immediately, like the way proust's tea-dipped madeleine brought his own memories flooding back (see, i DID learn something from university). i guess i've got a long way to go. that sentence, it summarizes what i feel about words i suppose. they've a sort of immortality about them, it's perhaps why blogging seems to take so much out of me. it's a chunk of my mind laid out here for you. it's not melancholy, i try to be subjectively objective (hehe now i'm just talking crap), i really DO believe that life's the important thing. that's why, though being melancholy sometimes feels quite nice (heh), self-pity CAN turn into quicksand, or a drug. it becomes a safe sort of feeling, an anchor, the bed that you don't want to get up from in the morning so that you'll have to face the day and its inherent dangers. but hey darlings, it's all part of the phenomenon called living. so wake up and take great delight in smelling the shite in singapore, because they have poo in paris, the same sort of dung in dubai... okay. you get the idea.