Top New Year's resolution: Read more. Write more (other than work).

You think when you get older you'd read more classics, more philosophical works, more non-fiction. Genres  beyond your years because at the age of 21, you want to prove how intelligent and wide reader you are. (There's just so many 20 books you need to read in your 20s list, 30 books in your 30s, I plan to read some of it) But instead, you get stuck in Young Adult and you're not even ashamed. Way better than getting caught reading 50 Shades of Grey in public, or even in your e-reader cause nosy people can still read the large font, you guys.

Apologies

"What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being." - Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Someday, I will get this permanently inked on my skin. Guess not today. 

This sums up 2012 for me and even when the new year came around, I still feel adrift. 

I want to be more, want to be here, want to leave footprints, want to know where I'm going, or atleast, keep going wherever I'm headed. 

I'm taking it one day at a time, one book at a time. 

Somewhere in the pages, I'll find a word, a phrase that would hold me down.

Apologies for not being here.

October's come and gone

Hello from a month-long hiatus!

I miss it here, though to tell the truth, I shun this corner out of hopelessness. There really comes a time in your life that you fail to see the point in everything. So you blindly trudge on and bump into things and you end up with a couple of bruises.

The past month has been a philosophical roller coaster ride. I spent weeks of introspection and lost thousands of brain cells in the process. Just when I was clearly losing a battle with myself, someone I barely know looks me in the eye and says, no - exclaims "great pretender!", with a finger pointing at me of course. I have nothing against mind-reading and mind-readers, but that accusation knocked me off, like I was found guilty without due process in court. Psychologists or whatever you call them - not even a real one! - are not supposed to judge you or persecute you. I guess I was more bothered by the fact that I was bothered at all.

The thing is when I asked someone who really knows me if I was guilty, he said yes, and I accepted it without question. I realized that while some people are out to diminish you, there are people who accept you for your being, your flaws, your passion, that you learn not to be so hard on yourself. That I am very much appreciated. I'm glad someone found me before I fade away.

Do you know the feeling when you're reading a book and it becomes your perspective on life? I found solace in Milan Kundera's words:

"What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being." 

"The absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant." - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

September's slut

We sit through days willing the Earth to rotate faster, wishing Mondays turn to Fridays, to skip the tawdry parts that have become essential in our lives. Still, we look back and realize how fast time flies. Days that dragged on now seemed weightless.

I barely had enough time to cozy up with September when it's about to fold into itself again until next year. My relationship with September is more than a dodgy one night stand - though it was great. We went on a date at The Night Circus, gave me a bouquet of orange Hemingways, had a bottle of Bradbury talking about What happened to Anna K. all night. As we lay side by side, Maugham playing softly on the background, I felt The Unbearable Lightness of Being. ;)

September books from MIBF, Booksale & J. <3

Lust

Having a day at your own pace. Being able to read at breakfast, a book on your left hand, the fork on the other, and taking little sips of coffee in between. I live for these things. When I finally get out of bed after hitting snooze three times on a Monday morning, it's what I look forward to. We can't help but live for the weekends. We drift through days.

I love my work - don't get me wrong - even if sometimes I feel like I'm being thrown at the open sea, leaving me to swim my way back to shore. I can barely keep my head above the water, but I keep on treading. At the end of the day, when my toes finally feel the smooth sand, there's nothing left to do but wade to dry land. And it's fulfilling, to save yourself.

Then I'm left alone with my mind for one and a half hour ride home. I look forward to those times, when I can watch the streetlights moving in a constant stream of light. Look at people's shadowed faces, bowed heads swaying almost rhythmically to the moving car. Once, I buried my nose up a book, only stopping on the short distance between streetlamps, enveloping the car in darkness. Most times, thoughts pour in. Memories. Dreams. Life. It becomes the air I breathe, filling me up before I breathe them back to the world in quiet whispers.

The thing is, I don't know what I'm talking about. When I wrote (typed) the first sentences, I don't know where I'm headed. I weaved words one after the other and it's such a delicious feeling to be doing so. Not constructing sentences, but writing them, flowing from my fingertips. Exhaling words into the world.

I'm not sure if I made any sense. I just wanted to write, to create, to appreciate words. I find I want a lot of things, turning me into a million pieces. I want to move, want to be here and a hundred places all out once. To see the fiery colors of autumn. To fold in to myself. To feel lost then found. I want to bite into the world. I want the imprints of the world on my skin. To not feel limited but infinite.

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited." - Slyvia Plath