lullaby

(camus asked: why should one not commit suicide? I say: you're right.)

my mind wanders the streets of the night
looking for things to fill my empty heart
but try as I might
things they just fall apart.

back and forth behind a cigarette
up and down glasses of straight whiskey
in and out the doors of women
at the end of it all, i am still alone.

i am a blob, a pulp,
a mass of seething melancholy
my heart beats a tired rhythm
i wish it would stop.

my head hurts from the buzzing in my ears
the buzzing of satre's nausea
my breath halts and starts
i wish i was dead.

down the spiral of despair i go
it is an old familiar path i trod
every single step is to the same old tune
even self-destruction bores me...

and nothing will be enough tonight
i wont be better come the morning
a haircut wont be catharsis this time
for i am sick of myself

there is no cure
there will be no better tomorrow
there is no one to save me
there is only restlessness and desire, suffering and revulsion.

please, some brown-eyed angel
yesterday i wanted you to love me
today i want your eyes to reflect the disgust i feel towards my diseased soul
put me out of my misery with your carelessness.

i yearn -
but there is nothing to yearn for;
i cry -
when there is nothing to cry about;
i sigh -
yet i can't let myself go;
i am wound up tighter than a music box
it is fucked. it wont play.
i wind it up tighter.
it's about to explode -
but it cant. instead
it implodes
and, in time
i too will be dead inside.
and my husk, my mask, my facade, my shell
can go to hell.

dazed/depressed

restlessness is the revulsion that runs through my body after i drink from the well of inaction. the water from that well spring from many sources: boredom, guilt and depression. i've gotten to know the taste of that water well during my electives. but it is the same restlessness that makes me think and mull over the old issues; the same nausea that sometimes threatens to overwhelm me, at milder doses, forces me to find outlet through words. and it is words that will make me immortal. dare i dream so much? i, who play the cynic so well? who pretends to yearn for death to come already? what business have i dreaming of immortality? yet there is power through words. there is power through music, film, theatre and arts. power over other people - the only thing worth measuring, the sweetness which drives men beyond themselves.

but people, individuals, me - so transient and insignificant. and yet there are so many of us, each of us so complex, full of emotions and desires and memories. i cannot even begin to understand the people i know well, let alone the ones i have only spent an hour with. and all these people that come and go in my life, leaving behind only shards of their stories and personality, such tantalising yet inadequate glimpses into their being, then disappearing forever; and in the mean time i brood over these pretty little shards in my lap, trying to piece together the world, while the world revolves around me ever changing, yet somehow staying the same, like a mighty river; and suddenly i would be startled by the passage of time, the only thing that we can truly call our own yet the only shackles that we cannot break free from - it is the rattling of the shackles of time that startles me.

for soon it will be time for me to lay down and sleep, and soon it will be morning and time to live another day. soon the week will be over, and soon i will sitting lost in the music of rossini and rachmaninov at hamer hall. almost as soon this block will be over then the semester and then the year and then quick as a flash i will be middle aged then old. when will the rattling of time startle me next? for life will roll on like the waves at the seaside, washing over me and me sinking down to the bottom, until it is the end and i shall be alone once more. the pages turn in my journal like the pages in the calendar. tomorrow becomes today becomes yesterday becomes half pages of scribbled lines. day after day i wake and wonder and wander and find myself lost. night and night again i sleep and wake and find myself crying for no reason or simply feeling the restless in every cell of my body. it crawls under my skin and all over my consciousness and makes me pace around the confinement of my room, my life, the walls closing in and suffocating me. i open the door and step out but the fresh air chokes me and i feel ill i feel ill i need to throw up. when will it end? please let it end now somebody save me some angel with the eyes as deep as Understanding please look into my soul and love me. watch me while i sleep. let me feel content and not desire any more because nothing makes me happy i want only to be free from it all the wanting the searching the loneliness to stop thinking...

all i want is to sit in the sun once in a while, to feel it on my skin; to feel a slight breeze on my face. and to not care, just a few moments of contentment. but it never stops - i'm either too dazed to know or too depressed to care. my life is flowing out of my broken mind into the earth seeping through the cracks and leaving me empty and dry and bitter. my blood flows like the sand in the hourglass like the leaves rustling on the tree and me listening and the cars and people flashing by and the traffic lights turning red turning green turning red and the sun going down.

and then. one fine morning we wake up to the sound of birds chirping outside our window. aren't we glad life is but a dream? isn't it bittersweet that all the heroes and heroines are left behind, victorious yet fading from our memories? there are no lasting triumphs or insurmountable obastacles or neverchanging truths. there are only me, and you and the stories we make up to amuse ourselves, the masks we put on when we leave the house in the morning, and the people we meet and leave behind.

偶 然 (徐志摩)

我是天空里的一片雲，
偶爾投影在你的波心──
你不必訝異，
更無須歡喜──
在轉瞬間消滅了蹤影。

你我相逢在黑夜的海上，
你有你的，我有我的，方向；
你記得也好，
最好你忘掉
在這交會時互放的光亮！

(An inadequate translation by me:)

i'm a piece of cloud in the sky,
by chance reflected in your mind –
there’s no need to be astonished,
especially no need to feel thrilled –
for i'll disappear in the blink of an eye.

you and i meet amongst the waves in the dark night,
you have yours, I have mine, direction;
you may want to remember,
but it’s best you forget
the brilliant exchange of this moment!

embracing my awkwardness

it's a funny old game: this morning we rocked up to rounds at 8:30am and guess what? it was cancelled. and - you guessed it - we had nothing on for the rest of the day! fortunately a resident sympathised with us and gave us some names so xiu and i wandered over for a chat with one of the old ladies in question, and somehow arranged to tag along to an OT home visit to her house in williamstown! score! it was one of those lovely homes with paintings and photos over every inch of the walls where we can glimpse into their lives over the past fifty years. we then breakfasted overlooking williamstown beach (where some locals were doing rather strange things) before calling it a day at 1pm. it's funny how well things turn out when you think it's gone down the drain!

met up with megs this arvo and trudged up and down lygon street for a few hours. i rarely see her now but every time we catch up we start off a bit unsure, swapping recent stories, trying to gauge what has changed in the other person; but soon we realise that things are pretty much the same, we still like the same things, still worry about the same things, still argue about the same things, and the conversation turns to old familiar questions that will never be answered; but we talk for the sake of talking and spending time together; and then it's time to part again. i'm shit at goodbyes. it's like coming across an old book on your bookshelf which you're not sure you've read before, but soon you realise you have but it's one of your favourites in days gone by, so you read the interesting bits while reliving part of your past, but soon you get a bit bored and put it back on the shelf, to rediscover it another day.

one thing we did talk about was what a long way we have both come since we first met. i've been doing a lot of thinking about this lately, given it's my final year at uni and all that, trying to consolidate the experience into something i can understand and more to the point remember. but i remember being in year eight and thinking tenth graders being so mature. but the simple truth is they had more time to think about things, to discover themselves and the world around them. their ideas werent any more valid than mine, they've just thought through them more. and hand-in-hand with this, they're more set in their ways, less original, less open to new ideas. and this, i guess, is one of the things i fear - that i'd become like that. when i was in first year i used to pity my parents, how they seemed so set in their ways of thinking. i'd fight on forever, i told myself. a bit later on i still didn't want to become like them, but i could see where they were coming from and how they'd gotten to be how they are. now, i find i'm looking at high school kids and finding myself sneering at their immaturity, but aren't i falling into the same trap?! am i becoming so fixed in my superiority, my ways of thinking, that i'm afraid to embrace awkwardness? have i lost my daring to make mistakes? i must remember to always fight to keep some part of that awkwardness, that daring, that innocence.